Network planners today have to ensure that the chosen solution provides the right mix of functionality and high performance while reducing the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). In addition, a solid, future-proof network design needs to cope with the rapid pace of technology change. The increasing role of the converged network makes high availability and Quality of Service (QoS) crucial to the success of many of today's rollouts. When selecting equipment, planners also need to have peace of mind that added features can be enabled without the need to purchase additional hardware or software.The NetIron MLX series of switching routers is designed to meet all these requirements and more. Built with Foundry's state-of-the-art, fifth-generation, network-processor-based architecture and Terabit-scale switch fabrics, the Foundry NetIron MLX series routers offer network planners a rich set of high-performance IPv4, IPv6, MPLS, and Multi-VRF capabilities as well as advanced Layer 2 switching capabilities. These advanced switching routers offer a wide range of capabilities that address the diverse needs of environments ranging from metro networks, ISPs, data centers, large enterprises, government networks, education/research, and High Performance Computing (HPC).Designed to enable reliable converged infrastructures and support mission-critical applications, the NetIron MLX series features an advanced N+1 redundant switch fabric architecture for very high availability. The architecture ensures that the system continues to operate at peak performance even in the case of a switch fabric card failure. In the highly unlikely case of additional fabric failures, this advanced architecture allows the system to continue to operate in a graceful degradation mode where the system tunes its performance to the remaining fabric capacity. The redundant fabric architecture is complemented by comprehensive hardware redundancy for the management modules, power supplies, and cooling system. In addition, the multi-service IronWare operating system, powering the NetIron MLX series, offers hitless management failover with BGP and OSPF graceful restart capabilities, as well as hitless (in-service) software upgrades for further enhancing both system availability and overall network availability.