The Reality of Reliability Versus Cost
One hundred percent reliability is a myth; too many unforeseen variables, like power drop-offs, server or software problems or unstable ISP connections, will always occur causing disruptions to even the most stable network. To increase reliability, many vendors will try to push customers to buy expensive equipment that results in only fractional changes in reliability. To avoid this trap, savvy customers are looking to vendors that offer improved resiliency for the critical data and communications traveling over the network. By introducing backup measures that increase resiliency, companies can achieve more robust reliability more cost effectively through lower total cost of ownership.

Network reliability must be considered hand-in-hand with TCO and equipment investments should be evaluated on their performance over price ratio. As opposed to fixed costs, TCO is dynamic, taking into consideration not only the equipment costs today, but also the numerous variable future costs like upgrading, service support and manpower to manage and administer the network. TCO spans the entire lifecycle of the equipment and comprises both external and internal expenditures. With a lower equipment expense, more resources can be allocated to reward internal IT staff or increase manpower for more strategic IT planning.

Effective backup measures that improve resiliency can greatly enhance overall reliability, while at the same time achieving lower total cost of ownership. Luckily there are network equipment providers who offer products with higher performance over price ratio than the more expensive alternatives.

Network Problems Today
Many network implementations do not consider backup devices to be a part of the whole architecture, which can create undesirable load balancing and single point failures resulting in poor performance and higher costs. Current add-on technologies used in network expansions can also bring hidden threats that can open potential security vulnerabilities making the network susceptible to costly attacks and intrusions and resulting in poor reliability.

Revolutionary Breakthrough
Intelligent Resilient Framework (IRF) is a distributed network technology designed to overcome the physical limitations of the traditional network, creating a truly unified and resilient architecture. IRF enables enterprises to manage greater amounts of traffic and improve network performance, following a "purchase on demand, scale as you grow" policy, meaning large upfront investment is not necessary.

Enjoy a Highly Resilient Network
Huawei-3Com's IRF Ethernet Switches are multilayer devices that fulfill the requirements of SME customers to design and implement a unified, resilient, high performing and robust access or aggregation network. IRF switches can expand easily and cost-effectively switch capacity by stacking up to eight similar switches. As the most advanced stackable technology on the market, IRF is revolutionizing the way companies build and grow their networks.

One innovative feature of IRF-enabled switches allows them to be interconnected to behave as a single logical switching entity called a Distributed Fabric. From a management and configuration point-of-view, the Fabric appears as a single device; while from a performance perspective, each switch in the Distributed Fabric can make its own forwarding decisions, both at Layer 2 and Layer 3 for traffic to improve bandwidth and traffic distribution and Distributed Link Aggregation ensures that loss of an individual switch will not affect connectivity resulting in a highly resilient network. IRF switches also feature enhanced security, advanced QoS capabilities and support VoIP applications.

IRF offers high expansibility (seamless on-demand upgrades), high reliability (no single point failure with collective backup) and easy management (Distributed Fabric). As a technology that will spawn a new era in enterprise networking, IRF proves Huawei-3Com's commitment to driving technology innovation through top-quality research and development and business processes.

Upgrade Seamlessly Now
Networks upgrading to Huawei-3Com's line of IRF switches are highly expansible and resilient. IRF technology allows for much easier and less disruptive network expansions without affecting the initial topology and ongoing network services. IRF capable networks enjoy improved reliability with no single-point link or routing failures, while the integrated security and management tools guarantee high availability and efficiency.