Hitachi GS4000 Series 10G High-End Core Switches

Hitachi Updated: 2007-10-02
Hitachi GS4000 Series 10G High-End Core Switches

The arrival of All-Ethernet networks, expanding from corporate to backbone networks, is becoming a commercial reality. Equally, more carriers and ISPs seek to offer this service to their customers.

The HITACHI GS4000 series of Gigabit switches was created to help you build All-Ethernet networks. With its superior levels of speed, performance, configuration flexibility, as well as hardware-based precision Ethernet QoS, the GS4000 transmits important data effortlessly and reliably, even in environmentally marginal or high-traffic environments. Today’s enterprise network devices need to forward data streams requiring large forwarding capacity, and at the same time handle mission-critical data without delay.

The next-generation GS4000 switches offer the ability to provide guaranteed Ethernet networks in place of the previous generation of best effort networks, without compromising performance and the ability to control bandwidth and latency. The GS4000 provides the simplicity of Ethernet with the reliability required by Carrier and Enterprise networks.

Designed into the GS4000 series is the raw processing capacity to deal with the demands of 10G Ethernet, and HITACHI’s technology cultivated through the development of reliable, high-performance switches and routers.

Five models of the GS4000 give you a choice of switching capacities, ranging from 192 Gbps in the GS4000-80E or 384 Gbps in the GS4000-160E, and up to 768 Gbps in the GS4000-320E. In each performance range, you may choose a model to operate from standard AC lines or -48/60 VDC power.

Key Features and Benefits

• Wire-Speed Transfer Processing on 10G Ethernet. Only HITACHI offers the per-slot backplane capacity to support 10G Ethernet at 100% of line rate.

• Ubiquitous Networks with Granular QoS. The GS4000 family provides hardware-based QoS that is scalable from corporate to carrier use.

• Layer 2/Layer 3 (IP) Switching. The GS4000 offers a full featured Layer 2 switch, with robust Layer 3 functionality. Even in a traffic environment where packets of IPv4 and IPv6, or MAC frames coexist, the GS4000 can provide wire-speed 10 Gbit/s Ethernet.

• IPv6/IPv4. The GS4000 provides the highest performance for both IPv4 and IPv6. With a broad array of IPv6 routing protocols it helps you build your IPv6 networks more flexibly. The GS4000 also features hardware-based QoS control or filtering of IPv6 packets and offers additional IPv6 functions.

• Industry’s Highest Port Density in a 7-Foot Rack. The combination of an efficient chassis design and high-density 1G/10G Ethernet interfaces provides up to 1,152 1G or 96 10G ports in a single rack.

• PSU Capacity of 48 Gbit/s. Packet Switching Units control packet searches, transfers and compatible network interfaces. Each hot-swappable PSU has a switching capacity of 48 Gbit/s.

• Unified Architecture. All models in the GS4000 series share a unified architecture in which common modules may be shared among different models, thus protecting your investment. Common software and command syntax enhance this feature.

• Redundancy and Hot Swapping of Critical Modules. Multiple and hot-swappable components insure switching reliability even in the face of component failures.

• Different Network Interfaces. The GS4000 supports Ethernet interfaces from 10Mbp/s to 10Gbp/s. Additionally, it supports POS router interfaces at OC-48c (2.4Gbp/s) and OC-192c (10Gbp/s) speeds. New oversubscribed network interface boards are available too, in order to meet a wide variety of network requirements.