Abstract

Marconi’s BXR-48000 Multiservice Switch Router was subjected to August 2002 carrier-class tests covering scalability, performance, and architecture. The Release 1.0 chassis supported 2 million virtual connections and sustained a non-blocking 240 Gbit/s aggregate bidirectional throughput across mixed OC-48c and OC-12c Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) cards, forwarding line-rate traffic for all packet sizes including IMIX patterns. Connection and PNNI convergence exercises confirmed wire-speed operation in both 10-card and 24-card configurations and showed network reconvergence in under four minutes without traffic loss.

Reliability testing demonstrated hitless software and fabric upgrades, zero-loss system control processor, fabric, and port failover, and <10 ms port recovery, all within the 50 ms carrier window. Dynamic buffering under congestion improved goodput from roughly 50% with static allocation to ≈75% while preserving low-volume, high-priority traffic.

Architectural validation showed the single-stage, output-buffered, non-blocking fabric isolates congestion to the affected port, safeguards other flows, and enforces per-connection QoS fairness even at high OC-48c rates. These results verify that the BXR-48000 delivers scalable wire-speed throughput, hitless resiliency, and efficient QoS management essential for service-provider networks migrating to converged IP/MPLS services.