The BCM56501 is the fifth generation of the highly-integrated and cost effective StrataSwitch and StrataXGS product line. The BCM56501 is a single-chip solution with four 10-GbE/HiGig+ uplink ports.
The uplink ports can operate in two modes: 10-GbE switching mode and HiGig+ uplink mode. The integrated 10-GbE switching ports are CX-4 compliant XAUI interfaces. The HiGig+ uplink interface is used to connect to other StrataXGS devices in a larger stacking system or to the BCM5675/BCM5676 Switch Fabric via a backplane in a multi-slot redundant chassis system.

FEATURES
• Fifth generation of StrataSwitch® and StrataXGS® product line
• Four 12-Gbps or 10-Gbps HiGig+™ port uplink interfaces
• Four 10-GbE switching ports, CX4 support
• Line-rate switching for all packet sizes and conditions
• On-chip data packet memory and table memory
• IPv6 routing and tunneling
• Advanced Fast Filter Processor (FFP) ContentAware™ classification
• Advanced security features in hardware
• Port-trunking and mirroring supported across stack
• Advanced packet flow control:
• Head-of-line blocking prevention
• Back pressure support
• Eight QoS queues per port with hierarchical minimum/maximum shaping per Classes of Service (CoS) per queue per port
• Standard compliant 802.1ad provider bridging