T320 Midplane Description

The T320 Core Router midplane is located in the center of the chassis and forms the rear of the FPC card cage (see Figure 1). The FPCs install into the midplane from the front of the chassis, and the SIBs, Routing Engines, control boards, and SCGs install into the midplane from the rear of the chassis. The power supplies and cooling system components also connect to the midplane.

The midplane performs the following major functions:

• Data path—Data packets are transferred across the midplane from the Packet Forwarding Engine on the originating FPC to the SIBs, and from the SIBs across the midplane to the Packet Forwarding Engine on the destination FPC.
• Power distribution—The router power supplies are connected to the midplane, which distributes power to all the router components.
• Signal path—The midplane provides the signal path to the FPCs, SIBs, Routing Engines, control boards, and other system components for monitoring and control of the system.

Figure 1: T320 Midplane

For chassis serial number information , see Locating T320 Component Serial Numbers Using the CLI.