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Dell Networking is the (new) name for the networking portfolio of Dell computers. In the first half of 2013 Dell started to re-brand their different existing networking product brands to Dell Networking. Dell Networking will be the new name for the networking-equipment that was known as Dell PowerConnect as well as the Force10 portfolio.

Dell used to be mainly a so-called box-shifter: they produced computers which could (only) be bought directly from Dell, but they didn't offer complete solutions. With the aqcuisition of Perot Systems Dell entered the market for the -more profitable- services market^[1] and also expanded on the software and system-management-market by bying KACE Networks,^[2] Quest Software, AppAssure and Credant Technologies. Other notable acquisitions include storage systems like EqualLogic, thin-client producer Wyse and firewall/security producer SonicWall.

In 2011, Dell took over high-end network-equipment producer Force10 Networks^[3] that mainly produces multi-layer switches for datacenter environments and with that step Dell entered the market for (enterprise and datacenter class) network equipment. Until then Dell didn't have their own network equipment: the switches that were sold under the brand PowerConnect were products designed and built -for Dell- by 3rd parties such as Broadcom and Marvell Technology Group. And Dell also offered existingt products from other suppliers with a 'PowerConnect' sticker on it like the B-series for Brocade (ethernet)switches or J-series for Juniper switches. But by buying Force10 and later network-security provider SonicWall the company now has own intellectual property networking systems and stopped selling most J- and B-series switches but continued to offer the legacy PowerConnect products made by Broadcom and Marvell with some overlap in the Force10 products.

In 2013 Dell has started the process to fully integrate these two product lines and rebrand the entire portfolio into Dell Networking, all running on Dell Networking Operating System (instead of FTOS and Powerconnect firmware). All new networking products will be marketed under the new name Dell Networking with a standardized naming-convention: Dell Networking <series-letter>-<4 digit number>. Most existing PowerConnect products will keep their existing names until they will go 'end of sales' (EOS) when they are replaced by new Dell Networking products or will be rebranded to the new naming convention.

The Dell Networking products will come in several families. The new naming system will partially follow the existing Force10 naming system: E-series for chassis-based modular (core) switches, C-series for chassis-based datacenter-access switches, S-series rack switches and Z-series for distributed core-switches.

• Z series: Datacenter distributed core switches: 1 model, the Z9000, 2 RU high with 40 Gbit/s QSFP+ Ethernet ports for datacenter usage offering 2,5 Tbit/s switching capacity on 32 port at 40Gbit/s or up to 128 ports at 10Gbit/s using QSFP+ - 4 SFP+ 10Gbit/s splitters.^[4][5]
• C series: Datacenter/core chassis based switches: 2 models,C150 (9RU) and C300 (13RU) for 1 and 10 Gbit/s
• E series: Virtualized core chassis based switches. campus, office or datacenter aggregation/core switches: 3 models for 1 and 10 Gbit/s aggregation
• S series: Edge-switches: 8 models 1RU for 1 and 10 Gbit/s ethernet^[6]
• W series: existing PowerConnect Wireless range from Aruba Networks
• M series: existing PowerConnect blade switches and MXL / MIO for M1000e
• N series: Dell Networking campus switches: N2000=layer 2 switches, N3000=multi layer 1Gb, N4000=multi layer 10Gb switches

Dell has a few ranges of articles in the complete networking market. This portfolio uses a few product names, such as Dell SonicWALL for network security devices, Dell PowerConnect for their original Ethernet networking switches and Dell Networking for the current networking portfolio, including the products from Force10. Below is an overview of the current portfolio of Dell Networking switches, including active models under the PowerConnect name. For legacy switches that are no longer being sold please check the Dell PowerConnect page and for non-ethernet Force10 products check the Force10 product page.

(For older products, not longer in active portfolio, please see the Dell PowerConnect page) The current portfolio of Dell PowerConnect rack switches consists of the following series:^[7]

• Power connect 2800 series : web-managed(only) 10/100/1000 ethernet switches
• Power connect 3500 series : managed 10/100 Mb layer 2 switches
• Power connect 5500 series : managed 10/100/1000 Mb layer 2 switches (with limited layer3 options)
• Power connect 6200 series : managed multi-layer gigabit Ethernet switches
• Power connect 7000 series : managed multi-layer gigabit Ethernet switches
• Power connect 8100 series : managed multi-layer tengigabit Ethernet switches, being renamed to DN N40xx series.

The PowerConnects 2800, 3500 and 5500 are based on Marvell Technology Group equipment while the PowerConnect 6200, 7000, 8100 and the blade-switches PCM6220, PCM6348 and PCM8024(-k) are powered by Broadcom

The Dell Networking PCT2800 web-managed switches are entry-level Ethernet switches that only offer a web-based GUI management interface. There are 4 models offering between 8 to 48 ports per switch. The interfaces on the switches are all copper-based gigabit Ethernet-ports and the 24 and 48 ports switches offer 2 or 4 'combo' ports where the last 2 (resp. 4) ports can use either the RJ45/UTP 1000BaseT copper-interface or a fiber SFP transceiver for uplinks to a distribution or core switch. All switches offer standard features like VLAN's, link-aggregation, auto-negotiation for speed- and duplex setting. The MAC address-table can hold up to 8000 MAC addresses in its forwarding table and have a 2Mb packet-buffering capacity^[8]

The PowerConnect 3500 series switches are Ethernet access-switches which comes in 4 models: the PCT3524 and PCT3548 with 24 resp 48 10/100Mb ethernet ports and the PCT3524P / PCT3548P with 24 or 48 10/100Mb with PoE option to power VOIP phones, Wifi Access-points or IP camera's.^[9] All models can be provided with a redundant power-supply for either pure redundant power or to provide full PoE power-budget for the 48 ports PoE switch. The technical specifications of the 'non PoE' and the 'PoE' models are the same in regards to switching capabilities and the main difference between the 24 and 48 port models is the total forwarding rate of the switch: 12,8Gbit/s for both 24 port models and 17,6 Gbit/s for the 48 port models. As with the PCT2800 models the MAC address table can hold up to 8000 MAC addresses.
Apart from all standard layer2 switching capabilities as VLAN's, link aggregation (static and LACP, dot1x access-security and dynamic vlan assignment, the switches also offer some basic IP routing/layer 3 processing.
All PCT3500 switches offer two gigabit ethernet (1000BaseT) ports for high-speed uplinks to distribution or core switches or for stacking of switches and two gigabit SFP ports for a 1Gbit/s fiber transceiver for uplinks to distribution/core layer.^[10]

The PowerConnect 5500 series switches are gigabit ethernet access-switches, available in 4 models: either a 24 or 48 port gigabit ethernet switch or a 24/48 port gigabit ethernet switch with power-over-ethernet option. Regardless of the model the switches offer two HDMI ports for stacking and two SFP+ 10Gbit transceiver ports for 10Gb uplinks.^[11]
The technical specifications of the 4 models are all the same, except for the number of ports and the PoE feature and the total switching capacity of 128 Gbit/s (24 port) or 176 Gbit/s (48 port)^[12] with a MAC address table size of 16.000 entries, up to 4000 VLAN's, support for link-aggregation, VLAN tagging, dot1x security and dynamic vlan assignment etc.
Although the switches are mainly layer2 ethernet switches they do offer some IP features as static routing (up to 64 static routes), IP or MAC based access-lists, DHCP snooping, quality of service options and IGMP (multicast) features. Up to 8 switches out of the 5500 series can be stacked, using the built-in HDMI stack-ports, to form one logical switch. The switch also offers special features for a voice-vlan as well as extensive options for dot1x security and dynamic vlan assignment via Radius or Tacacs+ server. For better energy efficiency the switch also offers Energy Efficient Ethernet or EEE (IEEE 802.3az) allowing the switch to negotiate a lower link-speed on access-interfaces when the connected client doesn't require the full bandwidth, and when the connected client requires more bandwidth than the active linkspeed it will (re)negotiate a higher speed. The PCT5500 series support Spanning-tree, Rapid Spanning-tree and Multiple spanning-tree. The default setting is rapid-spanning tree.
Other features offered by the PCT5500 series is port-mirroring, jumbo-frame support, dynamic ARP inspection, IGMP snooping, private vlan configuration, LLDP/LLDP-MED, management-access-lists etc.<cr> The two PoE enabled switches can offer up to 15,4 Watt of power to each of the 24 or 48 copper gigabit interfaces. To provide (full) power to more than 24 ports you need to install an extra 'redundant power supply' on the PCT5548P. In case one of the power-supplies would fail you can set PoE priorities to continue to give PoE power to most important devices and switch-off less important in cases where your power-budget is smaller than required budget.^[13]

Dell Networking offers two main-models for layer3 gigabit ethernet rack switches: the PowerConnect 6200 series and the PowerConnect 7000 series. In regards to available models for number of ports, PoE support and copper/fiber the PCT6200 and PCT7000 models are very similar. The basic features of both models are also very alike, but the PCT7000 series offer a range of additional features that are not available in the PCT6200. Some important differences between the PCT6200 and PCT7000 is that the PCT7000 offers a dedicated 'out-of-band' management interface. Although both switches are stackable: you can only stack either PCT6200 models or PCT7000 models in a single stack. The only exception is that it is possible to combine PCT7000 series with the blade-switch PCM6348 in a single stack. (But it is NOT possible to combine a PCT6200 rack switch with a PCM6220 blade-switch).

The PCT6200 series is the first real 'multi layer switch' and the PCT7000 is a more advanced and powerful multi-layer switch. But for both models the following characteristics apply: besides the basic IP features offered by the PCT5500 the PCT6200 series (and above) are real multi-layer switches offering dynamic routing features like RIP and OSPF. The PCT6200/PCT7000 series offer either 24 or 48 port switches with a PoE enabled variant on both the 24 and 48 port.^[14][15] And there are also switches offering 24 SFP interfaces for an all fiber network and/or to let the "-F series" switch be used as a distribution or core level with uplinks to remote access-switches via a fiber-optic link. Each of the models offer 24+4 or 48+4 ports on the front-side of the switch where the last (highest) 4 ports are so called 'combo ports': for the 'copper' based switches (1000BaseT or PoE models) there is an option to connect up to four fiber links using a SFP transceiver instead of the corresponding RJ45 copper interfaces. And on the PCTxx24F up to four RJ45 UTP ports (without PoE) can be used.
On the back-side of each model there are two extension-module bays that can be used for stacking or for 10Gbit uplinks offering two SFP+ transceiver ports. When stacking the PowerConnect series switches you must install the stacking module in bay1.

Some of the most obvious differences between the PCT6200 models and the PCT7000 models are:

The PCT7000 also offers a dual 10GbaseT copper 10Gbit uplink module where the 6200 series only offer a SFP+ uplink module

The PCT6200 stacking module can also be configured to run as a 10Gbit ethernet module with CX4 interfaces

On the PCT7000 series you can create a stack in combination with the PCM6348 blade switch in your Dell M1000e chassis

The PCT7000 series offer an 'out of band' management interface which keeps management traffic out of the main switching/routing part of the switches.

The PCT7048R and PCT7048RA is a switch with redundant power-supply (without need for external RPS module) and the RA offers reverse-air flow (back to ports direction, compared to ports to 'power supply side' in normal airflow). The PCT6200 series have only standard airflow and for redundant power-supply you need a separate (1 RU) RPS module).

The PCT7000 series offer a wider range of supported SFP+ optics, including some long-range multi mode 10Gb optics

The latest addition on the PowerConnect portfolio is the Powerconnect 8132(f) and 8164(f) offering up to 32 or 64 10GbaseT or SFP+ ports. The 8164(f) also offers built-in two QSFP+ 40Gb ports. All the PCT8100 models have one expension slot allowing to insert a dual QSFP+ port for two 40Gb interfaces or -with a break-out cable- 2 x 4 x SFP+ 10Gbit/s ports^[16]

The PowerConnect 8100 series switches announced in 2012 offered 24 or 48 ports on 10Gb and 0 or 2 built-in ports for 40 Gb QSFP ports.^[17] All models also have one extension-module slot with either two QSFP 40Gb ports, 4 SFP+ 10Gb ports or 4 10GbaseT ports. It is a small (1U) switch with a high port-density and can be used as distribution or (collapsed)core switch for campus networks and for use in the datacenter it offers features such as loss-less ethernet for iSCSI and FCoE, data center bridging (DCB) and iSCSI Auto-configure^[18] The PCT8100 series is a "multi-layer" switch which can be used as either a "pure" layer-2 ethernet-switch or as a "layer-3" switch with extensive IP routing functions. Most routing is done in hardware and can be done at (near) wire-speed. Management can be done via the "out-of-band" ethernet interface or "in-band" by connecting to one of the vlan-ip addresses. Management is possible via HTTP(s), telnet, SSH or even serial console cable.

Up to 6 units in the 8100 series can be stacked to form one logical switch and any type of interface (10Gb or 40Gb, fiber-optical or utp copper) can be used for stacking. Similar to the rack-switches PCT7000 and PCT8024 series the switch offers an out-of-band fast-ethernet port for management as well as a serial console connection, required for initial configuration.^[18] The switch is built around the Broadcom Trident+ ASIC: the same ASIC as can be found in Cisco Nexus 5000 switches or Force10 models. The PowerConnect 8100 is initially released with firmware 5.0 of the switch-firmware which offers the same features as the PowerConnect 7000 and 8024 rack-switches and the different M-series ethernet switches. The underlying operating system of the PCT8100 is based on Linux 2.6 where all other 'Broadcom powered' PowerConnects run on VxWorks.

With the introduction of the new firmware version 6.x in January 2014 the PCT8100 series switches are rebranded to Dell Networking-N40xx series`

This page is under re-construction: Please check the Force10 page for the existing portfolio. The information will be migrated to this page shortly

All new networking switches will be branded as Dell Networking switches and all switches will have a clear product naming: Dell Networking followed by a single letter and 4 digits number. Many of the existing Force10 switches already follow this naming system and they will just be renamed from Force10 to Dell Networking. The existing Dell PowerConnect switches will keep their current name until they reach 'end of sales' (except the PCT8100 which will become the [[#N4000 series|N4000 series).
Any new product line will follow the new naming system. Per early 2014 the following products exist^[19]:

M-Series switches for the PowerEdge M1000e blade enclosure

N-Series switches for (mainly) 1G and 10G campus networking

S-Series switches for 1,10 and 40Gb datacenter networking

C-Series switches: chassis based access switches

E-Series switches: virtualized core chassis based switches. campus, office or datacenter aggregation/core switches

Z-Series switches: distributed core switches^[20]

The Wireless product line will keep the PowerConnect W-series naming system.

The M-series switches are the Dell Networking switches for the PowerEdge M1000e blade chassis. Besides the existing PowerConnect switches on 1Gb and 10Gb, the M8428-K FCoE switch and the Cisco Ethernet and Broade FC switches there are two models in the Dell Networking range:

The MXL switch is a blade switch offering 32 internal 10Gb ports, two QSFP/40Gb external ports and a module slot for additional 40Gb or 10Gb Ethernet ports. The MXL is a multi-layer stackable switch that is based on the S4810 TOR switch. It offers full DCB/DCBx features and also offers FIP snooping for a converged (FCoE) infrastructure^[21].

Physically the same hardware as the MXL, the MIO offer a simplified method to connect blade servers to the datacenter networking core. It offers a simplified way to connect both data and storage traffic in the datacenter network and supports both optimal north-south traffic as well as east-west traffic that would then remain in the switch/chassis or within a multi-chassis stack.

The N-series product line has 3 sub-catagories: the N2000 series for layer-2 1Gb Ethernet switches, N3000 for 1Gb multi-layer switches and N4000 series for 10Gb campus core or datacenter 10G access series. All N-series will run Dell Networking Operating System (or DNOS) version 6.x.

The N2000 replaces the earlier PowerConnect 3500 and PowerConnect 5500 series as well as the Force10 S25 and S50 series switches. The N2000 series switches will be introduced in Q1 of 2014 and offer a range of stackable 1G Ethernet switches with 10G uplink options. Some models will support PoE to power phones, IP camera's or WiFi Access Points.

The N3000 is a range of 1G multi-layer Ethernet switches and replaces the PowerConnect 6200 and PowerConnect 7000 series switches. There will be switches with 24 or 48 'edge ports' and a range of uplink options at 10Gb. Some models will support PoE. The N3000 switches will be targeted as campus networking switches and supports a broad range of routing capabilities for IPv4 and IPv6.

The N4000 series offers 4 different models: the N4032 with 24 x 10 GBaseT Ethernet (copper) ports and up to two QSFP+ 40Gb uplink ports and the N4064 with 48 x 10GBaseT copper ports and up to 4 x 40Gb QSFP+. The N4032F and N4064F offer 24 resp. 48 SFP+ 10Gb Ethernet optical interfaces and up to two resp. four 40Gb QSFP+ ports. Up to six switches can be stacked using one or more 10Gb or 40Gb interfaces and all N40xx models can be mixed and matched in a single stack. The N4000 series also offers a multi-chassis MLAG option.
Each N40xx switch has one module extension slot that supports either 4 x 10Gb SFP+ or 10GBaseT or it offers 2 x QSFP+ ports that can be split in 4 x 10Gb with a break-out cable.^[22] The N4032 (-F) is (physically) the same switch as the PowerConnect 8132 (-F) switch and the N4064 (-F) is the same as the PowerConnect 8164 (-F) switch. A PowerConnect 8100 will become a Dell Networking N4000 switch when upgrading it to DNOS version 6.0 or higher.

The current portfolio of Force10 switches can be split into two main ranges: existing S25, S50, S55 and S60 one gigabit rack-switches which are layer2 or multilayer access-switches and the S4810, S4820T, S5000 and S600 series^[23]. The S25 and S50 + S55 will be replaced by the above mentioned N-series switches.

The S4810 is a datacenter switch with 48 x SFP+ 10Gb (optical) Ethernet ports and four 40Gb QSFP+ interfaces while the S4820 offers 48 x 10GBaseT (copper) rj-45 interfaces and four QSFP+ 40Gb interfaces. Up to six S4800 switches can be stacked, but a S4810 can only be stacked with other S4810's: it is not possible to have S4810's and S4820's within a single stack. The S4800 switches support Virtual Link Trunking.

The S5000 series is a modular Unified Storage switch. The basic chassis contains two CPU boards and four QSFP+ 40Gb interfaces and has room for 4 line card modules. A line-card module can either be a 12 port unified module or a 12 port SFP+ Ethernet module. At present a S5000 can only contain one unified module offering either 10Gb SFP+ Ethernet or 8Gb SFP+ fiber channel interfaces. The switch can be used in an environment that uses Fibre Channel over Ethernet or FCoE. With a future FTOS release it is possible to connect a FC based SAN directly to the S5000 unified module (^[24][25].

The S5000 main chassis contains two CPU's: one runs the standard FTOS/DNOS operating system, which is built on top of NetBSD while the 2nd CPU runs the QLogic Fiber Channel operating system. Unlike the existing Dell PowerConnect B8000e/M8428-K switches there is only one user-interface: the FTOS/DNOS CLI: all configuration is done in DNOS. (The PCM8428-k or PC-B8000 switch is based on Brocade FCoE B8000 switch and has two CLI modes: the FC fabric mode and the Ethernet switch mode). The CPU running DNOS communicates over an internal serial port with the FC CPU board^[26]

The S6000 series is a high-performance 10Gb/40Gb Ethernet datacenter switch with 32 QSFP+ 40Gb ports in a 1 RU form-factor. It can be used as a high-capacity datacenter distribution switch or medium sized (distributed) core switch. With QSFP2SFP+ break-out cables up to 96 x 10Gb SFP+ + 4 x 40Gb QSFP+ ports^[27]

article on C Series

The E-series are high capacity chassis based 1/10Gb core Ethernet switches. There are two (main) models: the E600i and E1200i series. The switches are built around a completely passive backplane in the chassis-enclosure, which allows to upgrade the switch to a 'new generation' technology without having to replace the chassis and backplane: only the modules and linecards need to be changed/upgraded to support higher speeds.
The main difference between the two models is the number of modules that fit in the enclosure^[28]

The E600i supports up to 7 line cards and is 16 RU high. A fully loaded E600i weighs 109 Kg and a basic system starts at 36,7 Kg. With Exascale line-cards and packet processors the raw switching capacity of a E600i is 1,75 Tbps and a forwarding capacity of 1042 Mpps. Up to 630 10/100/1000BaseT ports or 350 SFP Gb ports are supported^[28].

The E1200i supports up to 14 line cards and is 24 RU high. A fully loaded E1200i weighs 181 Kg and a basic system starts at 63 Kg. With Exascale line-cards and packet processors the raw switching capacity of a E1200i is 3,5 Tbps and a forwarding capacity of 2083 Mpps. Up to 1260 10/100/1000BaseT ports or 700 SFP Gb ports are supported^[28].

The Dell Networkin Z9000 switch is the (distributed) core switch in the Dell Networking portfolio. The Z9000 offers 32 QSFP ports at 40Gb in a 2 RU form factor. The 32 QSFP ports can be split into 128 SFP+/10Gb ports. It is designed to work as a distributed core switch in a leave-spine network setup that optimizes both 'normal' north-south traffic but is also optimized for east-west traffic which is a growing traffic pattern in modern datacenters.^[29]

The Dell Networking datacenter switches fully support Dell's Active Fabric Manager and all switches in the Dell networking portfolio (including legacy PowerConnect and all Force10 switches) can be managed via Dell's Open Manage Network Manager, a SNMP based management and monitoring tool which is based on Dorado RCSynergy management platform. For small networks (up to 10 Dell switches) OMNM can be used free of charge while for larger networks licences can be bought from Dell^[30]