Arista unveils 100G-ready, high-density 1G to 10G modular PoE switches

Arista Networks on Nov. 2 announced the expansion of its Cognitive Campus product line, including the new 750 Series modular chassis for enhanced security and simplified automation workflows. These new capabilities bring improved efficiency and opex reduction to enterprise workspaces based on modern cloud networking principles, contends the company.

As noted by Arista, "Today’s campus networks are evolving to support the growing variety of endpoints including WiFi6 access points, mobile technology and IoT (Internet of Things) devices. These trends are driving the need for increased performance and power efficiency of the network infrastructure to deliver both 5 and 10G connectivity with 25G and 100G wire rate uplinks. Migrating from 10G to 40G is expensive and challenging due to recabling costs where 25G is a cost-effective option and 100G delivers the highest performance."

To address these challenges, Arista has introduced its 750 Series systems, billed as "the first 100G ready, high-density 1G to 10G modular PoE (Power over Ethernet) switches, built for security, modern IoT and real-time telemetry" when deployed alongside the company's 720 Series 96 port chassis.

Arista CCS 750 Series Highlights

• First modular campus systems with 100G uplinks for a total of 400G of capacity

• High-density 1G to 10G and 90W PoE, enabling long term investment protection

• 5-slot system supports up to 240 ports with 5 line cards in just 7 rack units

• 8-slot model allows up to 384 ports with 8 line cards in just 10 RU

• Resilience at every level

Arista CCS 720 Series 96 port Highlights

• Delivers higher capacity than fixed 1U systems

• 96 mGig ports with 60W PoE

• 25G and 100G uplinks for simpler deployments in modern campuses

Arista says its 750 Series "delivers a rich suite of cognitive PoE capabilities including continuous, concurrent and dynamic PoE, a critical aspect of next-generation campus deployments addressing the proliferation of users, devices, end-points and IoT systems."

Customer benefits of the 750 Series, according to the company, include: predictable performance with 400G of uplinks and a future proof architecture; consistent latency with low jitter for video conferencing and real-time applications; unprecedented levels of resilience with independent switching and control planes; pervasive observability with the company's FlowTracker feature combined with the DANZ Monitoring Fabric and Awake Network Detection and Response (NDR) capabilities.

Arista contends that:

The networks that support today’s enterprise workspaces continue to suffer from too much complexity brought on by the myriad platforms, operating systems, proprietary features and network management tools from incumbent vendors. Responding to new trends such as the growth of IoT, the impact of malware and COVID working conditions, these brownfield networks do not have the pervasive security or operational agility to handle these trends and are in need of a refresh.

Emphasizing simplified design, the Arista Cognitive Campus is billed as an AI-driven approach to unify wired and wireless campus access built on real-time, data-driven analytics, delivering a great user and operator experience. The Arista Cognitive Campus is built on the standards-based Arista Universal Cloud Network (UCN) architecture based on proven Arista EOS (Extensible Operating System) control plane and CloudVision management plane software for consistent operations across network domains.

Further, regarding the need for pervasive encryption for data confidentiality, Arista notes that today's campuses are evolving from dedicated offices to smart workspaces with communal-shared, collaborative places. This drives enterprise security needs from the perimeter to end-to-end encryption. Campus networks require a zero-trust model with secure segmentation and dedicated encryption to avoid snooping through third party IoT or BYOD (Bring Your Own Device).

“ShotSpotter provides near real time acoustic gunshot detection and precision-policing solutions to help prevent and reduce gun violence. For us resilience and performance are key. Lives are on the line,” asserts David Halliday, head of Information Systems at ShotSpotter Inc. “Arista Cognitive Campus solutions provide cutting edge switching to our Incident Review Center and offices. These enterprise switches give us excellent availability and cutting-edge performance while integrating smoothly with our existing data center infrastructure.”

The Arista 750 Series supports security using industry standards-based MACsec encryption and EVPN/VXLAN segmentation. Each and every access port from 10Mb to 10G supports 256-bit encryption to secure communications between devices. Finally, all supervisor uplinks also support encryption for secure connectivity to the enterprise network.

The Arista 750 Series and 720 Series 96 port switches are shipping in Q4 2020.