Foundry Networks today introduced a new line of Ethernet switches that brings provider backbone bridging (PBB) to edge and aggregation networks, using Layer 2 devices to lend Layer 3 core networks greater scale.

The NetIron Carrier Ethernet switch 2000 series are one-rack-unit devices capable of handling up to 10-Gb/s of traffic. The products come in six different configurations, including 24- and 48-port models, 2- and 10-Gb/s uplink options and copper and fiber alternatives. They can handle 128,000 MAC addresses, 32,000 IPv4 routes and (for the 48-port version) up to 192 megabytes of buffering.

Foundry’s gear was designed to allow carriers to build edge and aggregation networks of varying scale with the same devices. Carriers can use the NetIron 2000s to build provider bridging (PB) networks at the edge -- which use a Q-in-Q or “stacked VLAN” approach, adding headers to customer traffic to scale up to 4,000 services -- and a PBB network upstream of that, at the aggregation level, adding another header to the traffic, which enables scaling to 16 million services. The same NetIron 2000 boxes can be used as PB nodes or PBB nodes, giving carriers unified management of the networks and allowing them to collapse those networks into one PBB network if they want.

Foundry’s offering resembles Alcatel-Lucent’s announcement in June of system that combined virtual private LAN service (VPLS) in the metro with PBB at the edge.

“We map the backbone VLAN IDs into services,” said Ananda Rajagopal, Foundry’s senior product marketing manager. “You’re trunking the services across VPLS.”

Rajagopal said Foundry’s new gear is “kind of similar” to that announced by Alcatel-Lucent this summer, though different in important ways. Among the differences is Foundry’s support of its ring protocols, MRP and MRP2, he said. “We don’t view layer 2 protocols and VPLS as 2 different domains. They’re tightly integrated. So you can now run MRP and MRP2 within the PBB network.”