M7i Router Description

The M7i Multiservice Edge Router is a complete routing system that provides ATM, channelized, Ethernet, IP services, and SONET/SDH interfaces for large networks and network applications, such as those supported by Internet service providers (ISPs).

The router accommodates up to four Physical Interface Cards (PICs). In addition to the PICs, the Fixed Interface Card (FIC) provides two Fast Ethernet ports or one Gigabit Ethernet port, depending on your configuration. The built-in tunnel interface on the Compact Forwarding Engine Board (CFEB) and Enhanced Compact Forwarding Engine Board (CFEB-E) provides tunneling services. The optional Adaptive Services Module (ASM) on the CFEB and CFEB-E, and the optional MultiServices Module (MSM) on the CFEB-E allow one or more services to be configured on this interface.

The router architecture cleanly separates control operations from packet forwarding operations, which helps to eliminate processing and traffic bottlenecks. Control operations in the router are performed by the Routing Engine, which runs Junos OS to handle routing protocols, traffic engineering, policy, policing, monitoring, and configuration management.

Application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), a definitive part of the router design, enable the router to forward data at the high speeds demanded by current network media. Forwarding operations in the router are performed by the Packet Forwarding Engine, which consists of hardware, including ASICs, designed by Juniper Networks. The Packet Forwarding Engine can forward up to 16 million packets per second (Mpps) for all packet sizes. The aggregate throughput is 4 gigabits per second (Gbps), full duplex, for the FPC with 4 PIC slots. The fixed interface card (FIC) has a maximum throughput of 1 Gbps full duplex. Inserting a combination of PICs with an aggregate higher than the maximum throughput of the FPC is supported, but constitutes oversubscription of the FPC.