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The ST200: One Router, All Services
Key Features
Advantages
System Design
Applications
Product Specifications

In contrast to systems with centralized routing and forwarding
architectures, the ST200 utilizes a redundant, distributed design
that enables highly scalable routing, as well as flexible interfaces
and multi-service support — all at wire speed. This type of architecture is essential at the edge where systems must be
extremely reliable and support a large number of customers and
a wide range of services.

Highly Scalable Routing: As the main controller for the ST200, the Route Control Processor (RCP) runs the ShadeTree system software and full suite of routing protocols, including BGP, OSPF-TE, IS-IS-TE and RIPv2, as well as MPLS signaling (RSVP-TE, LDP) and multicast (PIM-SM, MBGP, IGMPv2/3). Because all forwarding and interface maintenance is distributed to the network processors and line cards, the RCP can support a large number of routing adjacencies. For example, the ST200 supports over 3,000 BGP peering sessions, an order of magnitude greater than current edge routers.

Distributed Forwarding Architecture: ST200 forwarding is distributed across multiple (up to eight) Network Processor Blades (NPBs) that perform all packet processing, Layer 2/3 forwarding, IP filtering, accounting and link management for the system at wire speed. The NPBs support advanced services such as VPNs (which scale to over 2,000,000 VPN routes), where each customer has a unique forwarding table. By selectively distributing routes to each NPB, forwarding table capacity increases as cards are added to the system. This is in sharp contrast to routers that use a centralized forwarding table, which limits the number of customer-facing interfaces.

Flexible Interfaces: While most devices require specific cards for specific services, ST200 Physical Interface (PHY) cards contain highly flexible interfaces that support channelization from NxDS-0 to OC-48/STM-16, along with a variety of encapsulations such as ATM, Frame Relay, Ethernet, POS/PPP, HDLC, Multilink PPP (RFC 1990), Multilink Frame Relay (FRF.16), Inverse Multiplexing over ATM (IMA) and broadband (PPPoX). This ‘one card fits all’ solution requires fewer physical interconnects, accelerating provisioning and reducing deployment and sparing costs.

Scalable, Non-blocking Switching: The ST200 utilizes a non-blocking crossbar switch matrix called the Packet Switching Fabric (PXF).The PXF scales from 80 Gbps to 160 Gbps and features multiple priority levels for traffic management and support for high-speed multicast. The ST200 forwarding architecture delivers deterministic wire-speed performance with all features enabled. In contrast, the performance of traditional routers degrades as features are turned up.

Fully Redundant Components: To ensure that no single component failure leads to a total system failure, all major ST200 components are fully redundant, meeting the rigorous uptime and reliability requirements of the world’s largest service provider networks.