Nortel BayStack 5510-24T Specifications page 8

Fail-safe stacking
A key differentiator for BayStack 5510 Switches is their resilient stacking feature. BayStack
5510 Switches can stack up to eight units with a cascade stacking design, assuring continuous
uptime even if a single switch in the stack should fail. A loop-back or cascade cable is used to
seamlessly connect the entire stack to provide no single point of failure.
In the unlikely event of a switch failure, traffic performance is maintained at 40 Gbps on the
immediate units on either direction of the failed unit via a 'wrapping' method; the remaining
units in the stack continue to send traffic bi-directionally at full bandwidth capability of 80
Gbps per switch .
MAC addresses
BayStack 5510 Switches support up to 16,000 MAC addresses per switch or stack. For
deployment of large-scale, enterprise networks with many attached devices and workgroups,
this permits scalability to be achieved in a cost-effective manner.
VLAN support
VLANs can be established for each switch to extend the broadcast domain and segment
network traffic. These VLANs can be spread among port-based or protocol-based VLANs. The
VLANs can be on a standalone switch or across a stack. Protocol-based VLANs allow switch
ports to be assigned to a broadcast domain based on the protocol information within the
packet. These VLANs localize broadcast traffic and assure that the specified protocol type
packets are sent only to the protocol-based VLAN ports. The BayStack 5510 Switches have
been architected to support up to 4,000 VLANs. BayStack 5510 Switches also support per
VLAN Tagging option on each port.
IGMP snooping
BayStack 5510 Switches feature IP Multicast support by examining ('snooping') all Internet
Group Multicast Protocol (IGMP) traffic in hardware at line rate, and pruning unwanted
data streams from affecting network or end-station performance. Up to 256 IGMP groups
are supported.
Multiple Spanning Tree protocol groups
BayStack 5510 Switches support multiple Spanning Tree Groups (STGs), either in a single
standalone switch or distributed across a stack. STGs provide multiple data paths which can be
used for load-balancing and redundancy. The BayStack 5510 Switches have been architected to
support up to 256 STGs. The switch architecture also supports IEEE 802.1s and 802.1w † .
Nortel Networks Command Line Interface (NNCLI)
The NNCLI is used to automate general management and configuration of BayStack 5510
Switches. The NNCLI is used through a Telnet session or through the serial port on the console.
ASCII configuration files
BayStack 5510 Switches can download a user-editable ASCII configuration file from a TFTP
(Trivial File Transfer Protocol) server. The ASCII configuration file can be loaded automatically
at boot time or on-demand using the management systems (console menus or CLI). Once
downloaded, the configuration file automatically configures the switch or stack according to
the NNCLI commands in the file. This feature provides administrators with the flexibility of
creating command configuration files that can be used on several switches or stacks with minor
modifications.
The configuration settings of the switch can be displayed or saved to an external ASCII
configuration file made up of a series of CLI commands. This editable ASCII configuration
file can then be uploaded to a switch from an external file server. The ASCII configuration
file contains configuration settings for the following network management applications:
• Core applications (system information, topology, etc.)
• Internet Protocol
• Multi-Link Trunking (MLT)
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