The "love story" between boards and switches: How to identify the support relationship between them?

2023.11.09

The "love story" between boards and switches: How to identify the support relationship between them?

In this article, the editor will give you a thorough explanation: What is the support relationship between single boards and switches.

Have you ever had a question: Which switch supports this board?

Or you have a question: What boards does this switch support?

In this chapter, the editor will give you a thorough explanation: what is the support relationship between single boards and switches.

Which switch supports this board?

There will always be a moment when a question comes from the sky: Which series of switches does this board support? For the main control board and interface board, you can make a preliminary judgment based on the first two digits of the board name:

In fact, you can use this very powerful query tool "hardware query" to perfectly solve the query of various supporting relationships. Here is a demonstration of how to use it.

1. Press "Parts Information Query"

You can manually enter or select a specific product series, and the supported versions and device models will be automatically filtered out, as shown below:

You can continue to refine the query information according to the filter conditions listed below. For example, if you want to query the boards supported by S12704: click the "S12704" and "Single Board" options respectively, click the "Query" button, and the listed The result is the boards supported by S12704:

Click the BOM code of a certain board to jump to the detailed introduction page of the board. For example, click on the first 03030RPE:

2. Inquire by support status

3. You can enter the BOM code, external model number or board name silk screen of the component to query a specific component

For example, if you want to query a plug-in card ES5D21X04S01, enter the model number to query and you can get the relevant information of the plug-in card, including which devices it is supported on:

What types of boards does this switch support?

There are two main types of boards supported by the switch:

  • Main control board: The brain of the switch, managing and controlling the work and data forwarding of each interface board.
  • Switching board: Provides high-speed non-blocking data channels to realize business switching functions between various business modules.
  • Interface board: exists specifically for data reception, transmission, etc.
  • Value-added service board: designed for specific services such as firewall, AC function, NAT, etc.

What interface boards does the switch support?

The interface board is mainly used to exchange (receive and forward) data. The speed of exchanging data must be what everyone is most concerned about. When exchanging data, the interface board follows various rules, so the features and specifications supported by the interface board are also what everyone is most concerned about. Just like highways are divided into expressways, national highways, provincial highways, etc., according to the speed, interface boards are divided into 100GE, 40GE, 10GE, 25GE, GE, and FE interface boards. Detailed classification and support relationships are as follows:

Only the interface board with the largest number of interfaces is listed in the table.

Just like highways have dedicated lanes, mixed lanes, etc., according to functions, interface boards can be divided into: F series, S series, E series, B series, X series, etc. The main differences are in functional characteristics and software specifications. S7700 supports S series, E series, F series, B series boards, and X series, including:

S7900 supports E3E series, E3S series, E3L series, and X3S series.

S9700 supports S series, E series, F series, B series, X series and POS interface boards, including:

S12700 supports S series, E series, and X series, including:

S12700E supports X series, including X5E, X5S, X6E, X6H, X6S and AK (X5EK and X6EK) interface boards.

What are the value-added service boards supported by the switch?

Just as highways need traffic police and surveillance, networks need security functions such as firewalls, IPsec, intrusion detection, and anti-virus. Just as highways require traffic restrictions and traffic lights, networks require specific business functions such as load balancing, NAT (Network Address Translation), and NetStream. The editor lists the value-added service boards supported by the switch as follows:

  • SPU board: Provides load balancing, firewall, NAT, IPSec (IP Security), NetStream and other business functions for the switch.
  • OSP board: The operating system and application software can be installed to complete the functions of the application software. The software currently available for installation includes IPS application software.
  • ACU board: This board can be regarded as an independent AC device and is attached to the switch as a wireless access controller.
  • NGFW firewall board: It can quickly and flexibly integrate firewall, NAT, VPN and other security functions for IP networks.
  • IPS board: It can quickly and flexibly integrate security functions such as intrusion prevention, anti-virus, and DDoS attack defense for IP networks.