Extreme Networks VSP 8404

Extreme got the VSP family of switches as part of the Avaya Chapter 11 restructuring announced in January 2017. The acquisition closed on July 17, 2017.

This is a 4-slot 2RU switch. At introduction, it was a 10 / 40 Gb/s switch. That was December 2016.

A reddit post from early 2017 said:

I'm familiar with the VSP lineup, I guess my question was more directed at the fact that their core story is a bit lacking from my perspective, unless they have something new in the pipeline. VSP9k is pretty much dead. VSP8k and VSP7k are basically trident 2 boxes like everyone else has, max out at 24 qsfp+ on the VSP 8404. I don't see anything with 100Gbps but maybe I'm missing something. I think the one unique thing is their support for SPB and the proprietary extensions that make it applicable for layer 3. In a lot of use cases people are attacking that now with an EVPN control plane and VXLAN instead.
And, they did have something in the pipeline. In September 2017 the VSP8404C data sheet appeared. A new modular card now has 2 x 100G QSFP28. This seems like a Trident2+ with a dual gear box chip. All previous cards from the VSP8404 are compatible with the 8404C.

Packet Buffers

"New intelligent buffer technology self-tunes thresholds for excellent burst absorption, offering a 5x efficiency gain over existing static designs."
This leaves one to ponder what existing designs are compared against. Those words were written by Avaya before they sold the product to Extreme, but Extreme has not updated them.