Introduction to Cisco 6500 Series Switches

Cisco introduced the infusion of multiple innovations into its Catalyst 6500 Series Switches, the most widely deployed network switches on earth.

At the heart of the makeover is the introduction of the Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series Supervisor Engine 2T, a 2-terabit card that unlocks 80 gigabits per second per slot, new 10-gigabit and 10-Gigabit Ethernet line cards, and borderless services that provide customers with new mobility, security, network analysis and load balancing capabilities.

The new supervisor engine can increase the throughput capability of the Catalyst 6500 from 720 Gbps to 2 Tbps, a threefold increase. It can also quadruple the number of devices or users that can connect to a network. For example, a single Catalyst 6500 can now support up to 10,000 mobile devices.

All new line cards and the 2 Tbps supervisor are compatible with all Cisco E-Series chassis models, offering minimal intervention to the existing Catalyst 6500 E-Series infrastructure. This compatibility prevents rip-and-replace upgrades that jeopardize a customer's network uptime and require additional personnel, expenses and time.

More than 200 new technical features have been added to Cisco IOS Software to meet growing security, mobility, application, voice/video, and virtualization demands. These include: Advanced Security Services with the full Cisco TrustSec implementation, including hardware-based MacSec for wire-rate data confidentiality and integrity; Security Group Tagging for role assignment and persistence through the network; and Security Group Access Control Lists for role enforcement. The Catalyst 6500 Supervisor 2T Layer 3 Security Group Tagging allows for the secure interoperability and interconnection of geographically disperse networks. Scalable Network Virtualization Services with VRF-Lite, MPLS, and native hardware-based VPLS as well as MPLS over GRE are available at full interface speeds.

New L4-7 mobility, security, network analysis and load balancing service modules allow customers to reduce the number of L4-7 devices in their network they need to manage, improving energy efficiency and reducing carbon footprint.

Without penalizing the overall performance of the system, the new Supervisor 2T includes many technologies that ease the transition from IPv4 to IPv6. The Catalyst 6500 is also the first platform to offer IPv6 First Hop Security features (such as device tracking, Neighbor Discovery Protocol Inspection, and IPv6 per-port address limits) so customers can continue to grow their networks with a high assurance of security as they transition to IPv6.

First native support for technologies that simplify the LAN/WAN boundary for service providers and customers. These technologies, called Virtual Private LAN Services support and Bridged Domain Technology, enable rapid and flexible service provisioning, because the service bandwidth is not tied to the physical interface. Native support can substantially reduce the cost while radically improving performance for this proven, standardized technology.

To assist customers as they seek to increase the accuracy of capacity planning and resource allocation, Cisco has added support for Flexible and Sampled NetFlow for enhanced and granular monitoring of IPv4, IPv6, multicast and MPLS traffic. This refresh brings with it up to a fourfold increase - to 1 million - in the number of NetFlow entries that can be maintained.

While the "multicast" technique for one-to-many communication over an IP infrastructure has become increasingly important for market-data feeds and video broadcasts, multicast route scalability has been a persistent issue. To address this, the Cisco Supervisor Engine 2T provides up to a 16-fold increase in multicast route scalability. It also delivers major improvements to the way the Catalyst 6500 selectively forwards multicast traffic to only the links that have solicited them. Called IGMPv3 and MLDv2 Snooping, these enhancements help ensure that multicasting does not cause an unnecessary load on the host device, and they are especially useful for bandwidth-intensive IP multicast applications such as IPTV.

Cisco Catalyst 6900 Series 40 Gigabit Ethernet

Interface Module for Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series

Switches

Cisco® Catalyst® 6500 Series Switches offer a variety of Ethernet modules to serve different needs in the campus and data center for enterprise, commercial, and service provider customers. The Cisco Catalyst 6904 4-Port 40 Gigabit Ethernet Fiber Module, fully compliant with the IEEE 802.3ba standard, complements this product portfolio. The module is designed to meet the increasing demand for aggregation of 10 Gigabit Ethernet on campus and data center, as well as for high-density 10 Gigabit Ethernet and 40 Gigabit Ethernet transport in the core. Each port can accept a 40 Gigabit Ethernet C Form-Factor Pluggable (CFP) optics module or be converted to four ports of 10 Gigabit Ethernet with a FourX adapter, enabling customers to deploy 10 Gigabit Ethernet to meet current needs and be ready to transition to 40 Gigabit Ethernet without any disruption. The module can also be used in mixed mode, where one side of the card uses two CFP modules for 2 times 40 Gigabit Ethernet ports and the other side uses two FourX adapters for 8 times 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports. The Cisco Catalyst 6900 Series 4-Port 40 Gigabit Ethernet Fiber Module is compatible only with Cisco Catalyst 6500 Supervisor Engine 2T. Cisco Catalyst 6900 Series 4-port 40 Gigabit Ethernet Fiber Module can operate in a number of modes. Performance mode enables 80 Gigabit Ethernet performance by using two ports without oversubscription. In Oversubscribed mode, the module uses four ports with 2:1 oversubscription. Details are as follows:

● 40 Gigabit Ethernet Oversubscribed mode (default)

◦ Four 40 Gigabit Ethernet ports using CFP transceivers.

◦ Ports are numbered as interface FortyGigabitEthernetslot#/1-4.

◦ The interface range command is allowed.

● 10 Gigabit Ethernet Oversubscribed mode

◦ 16 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports using FourX adapters.

◦ Each FourX adapter has 4 SFP+ transceivers.

◦ Ports will be numbered as interface TenGigabitEthernetslot#/5-20.

◦ The interface range command is allowed.

● Mixed 10/40 Gigabit Ethernet mode

◦ One-half of the module uses two CFP transceivers for 2 x 40 Gigabit Ethernet ports, while the other half

uses two FourX adapters for 8 x 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports.

◦ Depending on which side has the 40 Gigabit Ethernet ports, port numbering is as follows:

● 40 Gigabit Ethernet ports on left: Interface FortyGigabitEthernet slot#/1-2 and interface

 TenGigabitEthernetslot#/13-20.

● 40 Gigabit Ethernet ports on right: InterfaceTenGigabitEthernetslot#/5-12 and interface

 FortyGigabitEthernetslot#/3-4.

● Performance mode

◦ Note that Oversubscribed mode is the default setting.

◦ In 40 Gigabit Ethernet Performance mode, ports 1 and 3 will be active.

◦ In 10 Gigabit Ethernet Performance mode, ports 5-8 and 13-16 will be active.

◦ The command-line interface (CLI) is required to change modes. Check release notes for details.

◦ The mode can be changed per port group.

The 4-Port 40 Gigabit Ethernet Fiber Module provides up to 44 x 40 Gigabit Ethernet Fiber ports in a single Cisco

Catalyst 6513-E chassis and 88 x 40 Gigabit Ethernet ports in a Cisco Catalyst 6500 Virtual Switching System

(VSS) 4T. The module has two 40-Gbps connections (for a total of 80 Gbps) to the 2-Tbps switch fabric of the

Cisco Catalyst Supervisor Engine 2T, providing 2:1 oversubscription when all four ports of 40 Gigabit Ethernet or

16 ports of 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports are active.

Cisco Catalyst 6904 modules support two types of CFP optics: CFP-40G-LR4 and CFP-40G-SR4, providing operational distances of up to 10-km over single-mode fiber and 100m over OM3 multimode fiber, respectively. FourX adapters support a variety of Small Form-Factor Pluggable Plus (SFP+) optics, as listed in Table 2. Each of the 40/10 Gigabit Ethernet ports supports Cisco TrustSec™ technology and IEEE 802.1ae (MACsec) encryption. The 40/10 Gigabit Ethernet ports also support Security Group Access Control Lists (SGACL), also known as Role-Based Access Control Lists (RBACL), and both Layer 2 and Layer 3 Security Group Tagging (SGT) functionality. The module also supports Virtual Switch Link (VSL) on all ports in both Oversubscribed mode and Performance mode