S6720-50L-HI-24S

The Huawei S6720-50L-HI-24S is a top-tier, high-density 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GE) fixed switch, part of Huawei’s most advanced S6720-HI series. The “HI” (High-End Version) designation signifies that this switch incorporates Huawei’s most sophisticated technologies, including a fully programmable architecture, intelligent network capabilities (IDN-Ready), and robust features for complex, high-demanding networks in enterprise, carrier, and data center environments.

Here’s an introduction to its key features and typical applications:

Key Features:

• High-Density 10GE SFP+ Ports: It is equipped with 48 x 10GE SFP+ ports. This provides an exceptionally high density of 10 Gigabit fiber connectivity, making it ideal for:
  • Connecting a large number of 10GE servers in a data center (as an access or even compact spine switch).
  • Providing high-performance 10GE access for demanding workstations and aggregating traffic from numerous access layer switches in large campus networks.
  • These ports support auto-negotiation down to 1GE speeds for backward compatibility.
• High-Bandwidth 100GE QSFP28 Uplink Ports: A major highlight of the HI series, it includes 2 x 100GE QSFP28 ports. These provide extremely high-bandwidth uplinks to the network core, spine layer in data centers, or for inter-switch links where massive throughput is required.
• Dual Pluggable Power Supply Slots: The switch features two power supply slots, enabling 1+1 power redundancy. This is crucial for maximizing availability and ensuring continuous network operation, as the switch can continue to function even if one power supply fails. Power modules (e.g., AC or DC options like 600W AC or 350W DC) are sold separately.
• No Extended Slots: This specific model has a fixed port configuration and does not support additional extended slots for modular interface cards.
• Superior Performance:
  • Switching Capacity: 2.56 Tbit/s (Terabits per second). This ensures wire-speed, non-blocking forwarding across all its 50 ports, even under the most demanding traffic conditions.
  • Packet Forwarding Rate: 1080 Mpps (Million packets per second). This indicates its extremely efficient processing of a massive volume of network packets.
  • Large MAC Address Table: Supports a large MAC address table (e.g., 64K MAC address entries), suitable for extensive network deployments.
• Intelligent Network Capabilities (HI Features – “IDN-Ready”):
  • Native Wireless AC Function: A standout feature, this switch can function as a built-in Wireless Access Controller (AC), capable of managing a significant number of Access Points (APs) directly (e.g., up to 1,024 APs). This simplifies wired and wireless network convergence, reducing the need for standalone AC hardware. The wireless forwarding performance can reach very high levels (e.g., 668 Gbit/s in some HI models).
  • Super Virtual Fabric (SVF): Enables network virtualization where the entire network (core/aggregation, access switches, and APs) can be virtualized into a single “super switch.” This vastly simplifies network management, configuration, and O&M.
  • Free Mobility: Supports user-centric policy management, ensuring consistent network experiences regardless of user location.
  • VXLAN Support: Supports Virtual Extensible LAN (VXLAN) for building agile, scalable, and multi-tenant cloud-ready data center and campus networks. It supports both centralized and distributed VXLAN gateways and BGP EVPN for dynamic tunnel establishment.
  • Intelligent O&M with Telemetry and iPCA: Supports advanced monitoring technologies like Telemetry for real-time device data collection and iPCA (Packet Conservation Algorithm for Internet) for granular, real-time network quality monitoring and precise fault location without dedicated probes or simulated traffic.
  • Built-in Security Probes: Includes capabilities for abnormal traffic detection, Encrypted Communications Analytics (ECA) to identify malicious encrypted traffic, and network-wide threat deception (honeypot functionality) for advanced security posture.
  • IEEE 1588v2 Protocol Support: For high-precision time synchronization, critical for sensitive applications in industries like power and transportation.
• Comprehensive Security Policies: Extends upon the EI series with even more robust security measures:
  • Defense against various DoS attacks, ARP, and ICMP flood attacks.
  • DHCP snooping, IP source guard, strict ARP learning.
  • 802.1X, MAC address authentication, portal authentication.
  • MACsec (Media Access Control Security) for hardware-based encryption of Ethernet frames between devices.
  • CPU defense mechanisms, blacklists/whitelists, attack source tracing.
• Advanced Quality of Service (QoS): Provides sophisticated QoS to guarantee performance for critical applications:
  • Flexible traffic classification, policing, shaping.
  • Multiple queue scheduling algorithms (WRR, DRR, PQ, WRR+PQ, DRR+PQ) and WRED (Weighted Random Early Detection) for congestion avoidance.
• High Reliability: Designed for maximum network uptime:
  • 1+1 power redundancy, hot-swappable power and fan modules.
  • Extensive set of redundancy protocols: STP/RSTP/MSTP, RRPP, Smart Link, SEP, G.8032 ERPS for millisecond-level protection.
  • E-trunk for inter-device link aggregation and BFD for rapid fault detection.
• Flexible Management and iStack:
  • iStack Technology: This allows multiple physical switches to be virtualized into a single logical switch for simplified management and enhanced scalability. Any 10GE SFP+ or 100GE QSFP28 ports can be configured as stack ports.
  • Supports CLI, Web-based NMS, SNMP, and cloud-based management platforms.

Typical Applications:

• High-Density 10GE Access/Spine in Data Centers: Its primary use case is as a high-performance access switch for 10GE servers or as a compact spine switch in smaller to medium-sized data center fabrics, leveraging the 100GE ports for inter-switch connectivity.
• Large-Scale Enterprise Campus Core/Aggregation: Ideal as a core or aggregation switch in very large and demanding campus networks, providing high-density 10GE access and critical 100GE uplinks to the backbone.
• Wired and Wireless Convergence: Its native AC capabilities make it a strong choice for environments that aim to converge wired and wireless networks onto a single platform, simplifying management and reducing CAPEX.
• Carrier Networks/Higher Education/Government: Its robust features, high performance, and advanced security make it suitable for various segments of carrier networks, as well as large university and government networks requiring high reliability and intelligent management.

The S6720-50L-HI-24S is a state-of-the-art fixed switch designed for future-proof networks that demand not just extreme bandwidth, but also intelligent operations, enhanced security, and seamless wired-wireless convergence.