Cisco announced a major refresh of Cisco Catalyst 6500 series switch extending the life of a switch family first introduced in 1999.
The cornerstone of the new announcement is a new supervisor engine, the Sup 2T. Supported only on the Catalyst 6500 E-Series chassis, the Supervisor Engine 2T (VS-S2T-10G, VS-S2T-10G-XL) delivers 2 Tbps performance and 80Gbps switching capacity per slot. It scales to 4 Tbps when deployed in a virtual switching system (VSS) configuration. Hardware components include a Policy Feature Card 4 (PFC4) for performance and scalability, and a Multilayer Switch Feature Card 5 (MSFC5) built on a dual core CPU for multilayer switching and routing intelligence.
The Sup 2T has backward compatibility with many line cards:
The 6700 Series modules with CFC are supported. A DFC4/DFC4XL upgrade option is available for a select number of 6700 Series modules; and a handful of 6100 Series modules are also supported (appendix below).
The Sup 2T supports several new line cards:
Four new 6900 Series line cards were introduced including an 8-port 10GE module which delivers 10Gbps performance on all 8 ports (WS-X6908-10G-2T, WS-X6908-10G-2TXL). Also available is a 4-port 40 GE/ 16-port 10GE module (WS-X6904-40G-2T, WS-X6904-40G-2TXL).
The 6800 Series provides fiber connectivity with 24-port and 48-port GigE modules (WS-X6824-SFP-2T, WS-X6824-SFP-2TXL, WS-X6848-SFP-2T, WS-X6848-SFP-2TXL). The 6800 Series also has copper connectivity on 48-port GigE and 16-port 10GE modules (WS-X6848-TX-2T, WS-X6848-TX-2TXL, WS-X6816-10T-2T, WS-X6816-10T-2TXL, WS-X6816-10G-2T, WS-X6816-10G-2TXL).
Support for 3 new services modules for the Catalyst 6500 was also announced:
The Wireless Services Module (WiSM-2) has 20Gbps throughput and supports up to 1000 access points and 10,000 devices. The Series Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA-SM) is a 16Gbps firewall with application and protocol inspection engines. The ASA-SM supports 2 million concurrent sessions and with four blades per chassis delivers aggregate firewall performance of 64Gbps. The Application Control Engine 30 (ACE30) module is an application switch that delivers 16-Gbps throughput and supports up to 30,000 transactions per second.
Appendix: Line card compatibility
Supported line cards:
• WS-X6704-10GE with CFC
• WS-X6724-SFP with CFC
• WS-X6748-SFP with CFC
• WS-X6748-GE-TX with CFC
• WS-X6148A-RJ-45, WS-X6148A-45AF, WS-X6148-FE-SFP, WS-X6148A-GE-TX, WS-X6148A-GE-45AF, WS-X6148E-GE-AT
With a DFC4 or DFC4XL upgrade (WS-F6k-DFC4-A, WS-F6k-DFC4-AXL):
• WS-X6704-10GE
• WS-X6724-SFP
• WS-X6748-SFP
• WS-X6748-GE-TX
With a DFC4 or DFC4XL upgrade (WS-F6k-DFC4-E, WS-F6k-DFC4-EXL):
• WS-X6716-10G-3C, WS-X6716-10G-3CXL
• WS-X6716-10T-3C, WS-X6716-10T-3CXL
Cisco links:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/modules/ps2797/ps11878/data_sheet_c78-648214.html
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/switches/ps5718/ps708/white_paper_c11-676346.html