Connecting The Irf Member Switches - H3C S9500E Series Configuration Manual

Connecting the IRF member switches

Connection medium
To establish an IRF fabric, physically connect the physical IRF ports of member switches. The connection
medium depends on the physical IRF ports supported by the switch.
If you use electrical interfaces as physical IRF ports, use network cables (cross-over or
•
straight-through) to connect them. This connection mode improves the usage of the available
resources (electrical interfaces are used to forward data traffic when not bound to any IRF port, and
used to forward packets between member switches when bound to IRF ports), and saves the cost as
well (without the need to purchase optical module used for IRF connection).
If you use optical ports as physical IRF ports, use fibers to connect them. This connection mode
•
connects physical switches located very far at a distance and provides flexible application.
NOTE:
A good practice is to use 10G optical Ethernet interfaces as physical IRF ports.
Connecting requirements
As shown in
bound to the IRF-Port2 on its neighbor switch.
Figure 5 IRF fabric physical connection
NOTE:
An IRF port can be bound to a maximum of 12 physical ports to increase the bandwidth and reliability of
the IRF port.
IRF topologies
IRF member switches typically adopt a daisy chain topology or ring topology, as shown in
The daisy chain topology is mainly used in a network where member switches are distributedly
•
located.
• The ring topology is more reliable than the daisy chain topology. In a daisy chained IRF fabric, the
failure of one link can cause the IRF fabric to partition into two independent IRF fabrics; the failure
of a link in a ring topology result in a daisy chain connection, not affecting IRF services.
If two IRF member switches are far away from each other (for example, if they are in different cities), you
can use a relay device to connect them, as shown in
Figure 5, connect the physical ports bound to IRF-Port1 on one switch to the physical ports
Figure 7.
5
Figure 6.