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In June, 2008, Nortel released a new software 5.0 for ERS8600 (aka Passport 8600) and introduced new features. On the first release day, I download it and made a brief preview of this software. No doubt, Nortel introduces some strong features that have never been on it's enterprise products, but other vendors have had them for a long time. This new software gives ERS8600 a good specificaiton for some network projects in Taiwan. Here are the features I would like to draw out.

New Software Features:

• Virtual Routing and Forwarding Lite (VRF Lite)

• RFC4364/2547 IP VPNs
  

— MPLS-based
— RFC4364-like IPinIP-based

• Nortel Secure Network Access (NSNA) 1.5 for R and RS modules

• Mirroring, VLAN scaling and multicast scaling enhancements

• Nortel command line interface (NNCLI)

• Software licensing

• Power Management

• Routed Split Multilink Trunking-Edge (RSMLT-Edge)

• Custom Auto-Negotiation Advertisements (CANA)

• Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP) Management Information Base (MIB) standardization

New Hardware Features:

• RS modules

• 10GBASE-LRM XFP and 1000BASE-EX SFP

• High-speed cooling module

• Dual input power supply

The most important part for upgrading the performance on ERS8600 is the new RS module. These modules use new hardware and software to provide enhanced QoS and port mirroring capabilities. RS modules include:

• 8612XLRS—offers 12 XFP ports

• 8634XGRS—offers 24 100/1000 Mbps SFP ports, 2 XFP ports, and 8 10/100/1000 Mbps copper ports
  

• 8648GBRS—offers 48 100/1000 Mbps SFP ports

• 8648GTRS—offers 48 10/100/1000 Mbps copper ports

Compare with the previous software, those new features and licensing are changed and I was excited of this new software before I read the release note. However, I would like to emphasize that Nortel makes a wrong strategy on licensing of ERS8600. Why do I talk about it? Here is the new licensing table of ERS8600.




The BGPv4, PCAP, and IPv6 become the features of Advanced License!!
Period to software 4.1, these were standard features for ERS8600. I don't know what exactly Nortel thinks but this is a very stupid licensing I have never seen on other platforms.

Anyway, for someone who is interested in this new release, I would like to suggest you read the release notes and any documents before you decide to use this new software even though I am a little disappointed of this release.