COMPANY CONFIDENTIAL • 1
Data Sheet
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June 2011
Version 1.0
AR8327/AR8327N Seven-port Gigabit Ethernet Switch
General Description
The AR8327 is a highly integrated seven-port
Gigabit Ethernet switch with non-blocking
switch fabric, a high-performance lookup unit
with 2048 MAC address, and a four-traffic class
Quality of Service (QoS) engine. The AR8327
has the flexibility to support various networking
applications. The AR8327 is designed for cost-
sensitive switch applications in wireless AP
routers, home gateways, and xDSL/cable
modem platforms.
The AR8327
integrates all the functions of a
high-speed Switch system, including packet
buffer, PHY transceivers, media access
controllers, address management, and a non-
blocking switch fabric into a single 0.11 um
CMOS device. It complies with 10BASE-Te,
100BASE-Tx & 1000BASE-T specifications,
including the MAC control, pause frame, and
auto-negotiation subsections, providing
compatibility with all industry-standard
Ethernet, Fast Ethernet & Gigabit Ethernet
networks.
The AR8327 device contains five full-duplex
10BASE-Te/100BASE-TX/1000BASE-T
transceivers and 10BASE-Te/100BASE-TX can
run at half duplex, each of which performs all
of the physical layer interface functions for
10BASE-Te Ethernet on Category 5 unshielded
twisted-pair (UTP) cable and 100BASE-TX
Fast/Gigabit Ethernet on Category 5 UTP
cable. The remaining 2 ports feature a standard
GMII/RGMII/MII/Serdes interface to allow
connection to a host CPU in PON/xDSL/
Cable/Wifi/Fiber routers. The media access
controllers on the AR8327 also support Jumbo
Frames which are typically used for high-
performance connections to servers because
they offer a smaller percentage of overhead on
the link for more efficiency.
MDC/MDIO or EEPROM interfaces provide
easy programming of the on-chip 802.1p QoS
and/or DiffServ/TOS. This allows switch
traffic to be given different classes of priority or
service - for example, voice traffic for IP phone
applications, video traffic for multimedia
applications, or data traffic for e-mail. Up to 4K
Virtual LANs (VLANs) can be set up via the
MDC/MDIO port for separation of different
users or groups on the network. ACL features
can reduce CPU effort for VLAN/Q.O.S/
DSCP/Forward mapping & remapping based
on layer1 to Layer4 information. 16 PPPoE
header add/removal can increase Video
quality and offload the CPU. Hardware IGMP
V1/V2/V3 is an innovation for IPTV service.
Green Power can increase energy efficiency for
no link or idle states.
The AR8327N chip supports hardware NAT
(Network Address Translation) to offload the
CPU and achieve the full wire speed when
doing NAT. The AR8327/AR8327N supports
the following modes of NAT.
1. Basic NAT: This involves IP address
translation only, not port mapping.
2. Network Address Port Translation (NAPT):
This involves the translation of both IP
addresses and port numbers. For the NAPT
mode, the AR8327/AR8327N can support
Full cone NAT, Restricted cone NAT, Port-
Restricted cone NAT and Symmetric NAT.
e AR8327/AR8327N supports the following
configurations
n 5*10/100/1000Base-T + GMII/RGMII/MII
+ 1* Serdes
n 5* 10/100/1000Base-T + 2*RGMII/MII
n 4* 10/100/1000Base-T + 1*RGMII/MII + 1*
Single RGMII PHY
AR8327/AR8327N Features
The AR8327 chip family includes a 7-port MAC
structure to support the following family of
switch chips:
n Supports 802.3az Power Management
n The AR8327N chip includes the Hardware
NAT (Network Address Translation)
function