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Through support for standards-based
Power over Ethernet (IEEE 802.3af
PoE), power can be delivered to IP-
based phones, which eliminates the
need to have a separate power supply for
each phone, thus reducing cabling and
management costs when there are adds,
moves or changes. Additionally, through
the ability to auto-discover Nortel IP
handsets, the Ethernet Routing Switch
4500 can automatically configure the
switch port to which the phone is
connected. This ensures that the right
quality of service (QoS) and VLAN
settings are applied, making mass phone
deployments quick and easy.
Intelligent stacking solution
delivering scalability,
flexibility, resilience
and performance
The creation of a stack through Nortel's
intelligent stacking architecture is made
flexible by being able to stack up to
eight models within the Ethernet
Routing Switch 4500 family together.
This is an ideal solution for enterprises
with Fast Ethernet, Gigabit users or a
combination of both. As a single stacked
entity, all switches are managed via a
single IP address and offer the same
high resiliency and common feature set,
simplifying management and deploy-
ment across the network.
Nortel's Ethernet Routing Switch 4500
Series combines high resiliency with
high-performance stacking, delivering
up to 320-Gbps throughput. Intelligent
bi-directional traffic flows between
switches ensure that the highest perfor-
mance and most efficient paths are used
for traffic flows. Added to this, the
ability to distribute trunks or aggrega-
tions across different units in the stack
ensures that even in the unlikely event of
a switch or link failure, traffic continues
to flow virtually uninterrupted for the
remaining units in the stack.
2
For seamless scalability, the Ethernet
Routing Switch 4500 Series can deliver
up to 400 ports, meeting almost any
customer's requirements of scalability
and port speed flexibility, allowing the
network infrastructure to grow as the
business requirements change.
Securing access at the edge
The Ethernet Routing Switch 4500
offers high levels of flexible security
options, ensuring that only authorized
personnel gain access to a company's
LAN. Whether it is through use of an
IEEE 802.1X-based EAP client or
through a device's MAC address,
network managers can ensure that
only those who have successfully been
authenticated have access to their speci-
fied resources. Through the use of
Nortel's Secure Network Access solu-
tion, the Ethernet Routing Switch 4500
can not only provide user/device authen-
tication, but can enforce endpoint secu-
rity via advanced posture assessment
capabilities.
For further flexibility, the Ethernet
Routing Switch 4500 can support the
authentication of multiple devices/users
on a single port. For example, if a user's
PC connects into the network via an IP
handset (Figure 1), the PC and the IP
Phone can be authenticated for author-
ized use to that port. Additionally, if
your company frequently has visitors,
support for a Guest VLAN allows non-
authenticated users to still use the
network but to only have access to
those resources that have been pre-
specified for the Guest VLAN, such
as Internet access.
The Ethernet Routing Switch 4500's
advanced capabilities enable the switches
Figure 1. Converged connectivity
Figure 2. Converged connectivity
to actively protect the network against
malicious network attacks by protecting
DHCP services, verifying and filtering
ARP traffic via in hardware processing
as well as controlling the flow of span-
ning tree BPDUs within the network.
The powerful filtering capabilities of
the Ethernet Routing Switch 4500
that are often used for Quality of
Service to ensure mission-critical traffic
is prioritized can also be used to block
certain types of network traffic with
support for advanced packet classifica-
tion and deep packet filtering up to
128 bytes into a packet.
Secure and simplified
network management
Nortel's Ethernet Switch Software is
supported on all Ethernet Routing
Switch 4500 models delivering simpli-
fied network operations and manage-
ment by having a single image operate
on any mixture of models in a stack.
This eliminates the need to worry about
different software versions and capabili-
ties on different products. The software
image needs only to be loaded to the
base unit of the stack, which automati-
cally loads it to other switches. Even as
switches are added to an existing stack,
the Ethernet Routing Switch 4500
Series will ensure that the new switch
software is appropriately upgraded to
the software running on the stack.
The on-board USB port enables
network administrators to quickly and
easily upload or download a configura-
tion file onto a USB stick, thus allowing
the same configuration to either be
deployed across several switches, making
configuration of new switches seamless
or serving as a backup in case a switch
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