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The Choice Has Never Been Clearer

Andreas Bechtolsheim
by Andreas Bechtolsheim on May 14, 2019 3:45:22 AM

I am very excited about our next-generation R3 Series routing platforms, which are setting new standards for throughput, density, power efficiency and price performance. We designed these products to address the growing bandwidth demands in cloud datacenter and public networks, supported by significant Arista EOS enhancements including route scale, telemetry and security.

Our routing journey started in 2016, when we introduced the 7500R and 7280R Series, followed by the R2 Series in mid 2017. These products have been very widely embraced for their performance, scalability and reliability. Over the last three years, we have shipped over two Million R-Series 100G ports, far more than any other networking vendor for this product category.

We look forward to continuing this strong momentum with our new R3 Series which retains the proven VOQ big-buffer architecture of the previous generation, but is designed around the latest packet processing silicon that radically increase throughput, density and power efficiency.

Let me touch on five highlights of our new R3 platforms:

  1. Throughput: The packet processing silicon in the R3 Series offers 8X the throughput of the R1 Series and 5X the throughput of the R2 Series. This allowed us to increase throughput per next-generation line card by 4X compared to our previous generation platform.
  2. 400G Ethernet: 400G is the most important new Ethernet standard going forward with an estimated volume of 20M ports over the next three years (2020-2022). The R3 Series offers high-density 400G ports across all platforms to support these next-generation networks.
  3. Power Efficiency: Even with bandwidth escalating, power consumption cannot escalate. Next generation switch-router products, despite their increased throughput, have to stay within well-defined power envelopes. This was a major design focus for the R3 Series.
  4. New Features and Capabilities: The new R3 packet processing silicon offers significant enhancements in route scale, security and telemetry. This feature set is available across all R3 family members, with some models supporting even larger route tables.
  5. Wide Range of Form Factors: The new R3 Series comes in a wide range of form factors, including four fixed form factors, an upgrade to our award winning 7500 family, and the brand new 7800 modular chassis with up to 460 Tbps capacity per chassis.

Routing platforms with this level of throughput per chassis were not available until now and will greatly simplify the way next-generation high-speed networks will be built.
However, the single most important feature of any routing platform is the robustness and resiliency of its software stack. Arista’s EOS extensible operating system, which powers all of our switching and routing platforms, continues to lead the industry with its legendary stability.

The full details of our new R3 platforms are in their respective datasheets, so I won’t repeat them here, but I will say that all of them turned out great, offering breakthrough performance and density while maintaining our legendary software stability.

The choice how to build the next-generation of cloud-scale networks has never been clearer: The easiest way to go faster is with our new R3 platforms. 

AB-J2-Blog

Reference:

7800R3 Product Page

7500R3 Product Page

7280R3 Product Page

Opinions expressed here are the personal opinions of the original authors, not of Arista Networks. The content is provided for informational purposes only and is not meant to be an endorsement or representation by Arista Networks or any other party.

Andreas Bechtolsheim
As Chief Development Officer, Andy Bechtolsheim is responsible for the overall product development and technical direction of Arista Networks.

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