The company is growing its R4 family of high-capacity devices with several new additions: the 7020, a fixed leaf edge router supporting 10G to 25G with 100G uplinks; the 7280, a fixed 100G leaf or spine aggregation switch with 800G uplinks; and the 7800, a modular high-end 800G spine router featuring Arista’s 3.2Tbps HyperPort Ethernet capability.

Figure 1. Arista Boosts Networking Portfolio with New AI-Optimized Gear.

“The R4 portfolio functions like a Swiss Army knife, offering a unified set of silicon and software features across multiple platform options,” said Brendan Gibbs, Arista VP of AI, routing, and switching platforms, in an interview with Network World. “It’s designed for AI and data center environments, giving customers the flexibility to choose the right form factor—whether leaf or spine—while providing a range of port speeds, densities, and interfaces for peering or AI cluster support.” Figure 1 shows Arista Boosts Networking Portfolio with New AI-Optimized Gear.

“From an AI standpoint, if all GPUs and XPUs are equipped with 400G, a higher-speed spine platform is required for aggregation,” said Brendan Gibbs, Arista VP of AI, routing, and switching platforms. “We’re addressing that need with both fixed and modular options. Enterprise data centers also run complex workloads that increase leaf-layer speed requirements. Moving from a 10G leaf to a 25G leaf raises the demand for aggregation and spine speeds. Today, more customers are adopting dense 25G leaves, which drives the need for dense 100G aggregation and spine speeds from 400G to 800G—needs we’re addressing with our new portfolio.”

The 7020R4 10G/25G boxes are top-of-rack Ethernet switches featuring deep packet buffers for demanding server-edge workloads, storage aggregation, or campus spine aggregation for downstream PoE switches. They offer up to 50% lower power consumption per Gbps compared to the previous generation.

The 7280R4-32PE provides 25.6 Tbps switching capacity, supporting 32x 800GbE ports with OSFP or QSFP-DD uplinks. It is designed for AI/ML workloads and routing-intensive edge applications, delivering 25% lower power per Gbps than its predecessor.

A second variant, the 7280R4-64QC-10PE, targets dense, deep-buffer workloads in data centers requiring 100G/800G connectivity. It supports 64x 100GbE, 10x 800GbE OSFP, and 4x 1/10/25GbE for management or low-speed interfaces, with a 20% lower power requirement per Gbps versus the prior generation.

At the high end, the 7800R4 is Arista’s flagship platform, supporting 36 ports of 800GbE OSFP and QSFP-DD line cards in 4-, 8-, 12-, and 16-slot chassis configurations. Fully loaded, it can handle 576 physical 800GbE ports or 1,152 400GbE ports.

The 7800R4 also introduces the 3.2 Tbps HyperPort Ethernet line card, which supports four 800G channels for connecting widely dispersed data centers using Arista’s “scale across” approach. This Data Center Interconnect technology enables AI clusters to extend across metropolitan or long-haul links, supporting deployments across multiple sites or cities.

“Built on the flexible Extensible Operating System (EOS), which runs across all Arista networking gear, and leveraging deep buffering, HyperPort enables up to 44% faster job completion times (JCT) for high-bandwidth AI flows via a single high-speed port, compared with solutions that distribute traffic across multiple 800G ports,” wrote Brendan Gibbs, Arista VP of AI, routing, and switching platforms, in a blog co-authored with Martin Hull, VP and GM of cloud and AI platforms.

Arista positions the 7800R4 as the core of large-scale networks—whether as the central spine in enterprise, cloud hyperscaler, or service provider networks, AI Ethernet fabrics, cloud data centers, or campus and metro aggregation sites.

A key feature across all new R4 Series devices is “encryption everywhere.” Every port supports MACsec, and customers can implement TunnelSec, IPsec, or VXLANsec as needed. Gibbs noted, “Many of our customers want the ability to perform per-port encryption at very high speeds. This lets traffic between data centers, racks, or sites remain secure without additional encryption appliances.”

EOS allows customers to configure per-port encryption keys, policies, and security key management sessions directly, providing granular control over network security.

Source: NETWORK WORLD

Cite this article:

Priyadharshini S (2025), Arista Expands its Networking Portfolio with AI Solutions, AnaTechMaz, pp.238