The 7880IPG-NAT-6-10GE2 is a high-density, multi-port, multi-flow hardware Network Address Translation (NAT) engine with enhanced features such as Port Aggregation, Tunneling, Packet Replication and Bandwidth Capping, allowing service providers to seamlessly bridge across networks in multi-tenant environments. See the NAT whitepaper IP Networks Today: How We Got Here (629.8kB) for more information.
The 7880IPG-NAT-6-10GE is conceptually organized as 6 WAN-side ports +6 LAN-side ports, with a packet processing core between each WAN-LAN pair. A given processing core can sustain up to 256 data flows, configurable based on multicasts or VLAN Tags. This gives an exceptional product density of 12 x10GE ports, with 1536 multicast/VLAN flows - All in the space-efficient Evertz 7800 modular hardware platform.
Multiple processing cores can be configured to aggregate their Tx traffic to a single WAN Port. Correspondingly, Rx traffic from that WAN port is distributed to its contributing processing cores. WAN-side Port Aggregation allows network engineers to achieve functions such as port-based redundancy using the 7880IPG-NAT-6-10GE.
The 7880IPG-NAT-6-10GE is controlled by the industry-leading VistaLINK Pro, and via web interface.
The 12 Ethernet ports can be a mixture of GigE or 10GE, simply by populating the desired SFP, offering full flexibility for LAN & WAN interfacing.
The 7880IPG-NAT-6-10GE2 provides four modes of operation:
- The One-to-One NAT Mode allows unicast/multicast IP streams from one network to be translated to different unicast/multicast IP addresses, on a flow-by-flow basis, up to 256 unique flows per processing core. Address translation is available in both directions, while an optional Packet Replication feature is provided in the WAN-to-LAN direction.
- The Tunneling (or Encapsulation or MC-in-MC) NAT Mode allows unicast/ multicast addresses from the LAN side to be encapsulated into new multicasts for the WAN network, again, on a flow-by-flow basis, up to 128 unique settings per processing core. Correspondingly, traffic is deencapsulated in the WAN-to-LAN direction.
- The VLAN Mode allows VLAN-tagged datagrams from the LAN side to seamlessly enter a WAN after multicast encapsulation, similar to the Tunneling NAT mode. In this mode, however, flows are based on VLAN Tags, rather than unicasts/multicasts alone. Up to 256 unique flows can be configured per processing core, with independent encapsulation headers.
- The Port Mode allows the user to encapsulate all incoming LAN traffic on a given physical port, on a port-by-port basis. There is no multicast or VLAN Tag filtering - All traffic on that physical LAN port is encapsulated out to the WAN, and de-encapsulated in the reverse direction. This mode provides a Bandwidth Capping feature such that network operators can ensure that links do not over-subscribe their contribution limits to a WAN.