Comments on: Notes on Cisco Catalyst 6500 Architecture. (Or What Does 720 in Supervisor 720 Mean ?)

By: Justin

Justin — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 07:33:00 +0000

You forgot to mention that 40Gbps per slot is the Half-Duplex speed. Its Full-Duplex speed is 80Gbps 40Gbps in + 40Gbps out of the slot. That means the sup720 is 360Gbps + 360Gbps or 720Gbps.

Also the Sup2T supports 80Gbps per slot and supports dual channel on every slot in the 6513. That Half-Duplex on the slot again for a total of 160Gbps per slot or 2080Gbps where they get the 2T.

Why the marketing folks list the speed of the slot in Half-Duplex is odd given their willingness to jump at any reason to publish a bigger number but I suspect changing their ways might result in some serious backlash as “its how they have done it for years”.

By: Catalyst 6500 Information | AlwaysTheNetwork

Catalyst 6500 Information | AlwaysTheNetwork — Wed, 19 May 2010 20:03:58 +0000

[...] Great overview from Etherealmind [...]

By: Gigabit Converter

Gigabit Converter — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 09:39:48 +0000

It’s a great to know about how cisco catalyst works, but it would have been better if you have explained for what and why it is used.

By: Greg Ferro

Greg Ferro — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 09:40:59 +0000

As I remember, The C6513 was a popular choice in the early days of IP Telephony (now Unified Communications) because you needed slots for DSP banks for Transcoding and Gateways function as well as a lot of WS-X6148 modules for high density floors. At that time, the 256Gbps Fabric was new and exciting and the WS-C65xx modules were very expensive. Since the WS-65xx could only use one backplane channel at 8Gbps, the C6513 backplane looked like a good idea at the time.

That’s the way the marketing moves sometimes. If you give the customers what they ask for, you might regret it later.

By: 6513 - worst product possible

6513 - worst product possible — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 18:09:12 +0000

every time i have had conversations with people about 6513s, I always tell them to avoid it like the plague. Of the dozens I have encountered it has always been to remove them in place of 6509s or 6506s so that any card could go anywhere. So many customers are sold on the density but don’t realize the limitations. Cisco shouldn’t even sell this atrocity, they have been talking about fixing it for years but with the nexus 7ks it will never happen. At least the 7010 and 7018 have the same capacity in every slot.

By: Luis

Luis — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 11:26:17 +0000

Sorry forgot to mention , you can also search 2005 networkers

By: Luis

Luis — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 11:12:15 +0000

Google “Cisco Catalyst 6500 Switch Architecture.ppt”

These images are from a Power Point that Cisco distributes

By: News – February 8, 2010 | xcke's blog

News – February 8, 2010 | xcke's blog — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 05:05:21 +0000

[...] Notes on Cisco Catalyst 6500 Architecture. (Or What Does 720 in Supervisor 720 Mean ?) [...]

By: Robin

Robin — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 01:39:48 +0000

Any chance you could do the same analysis on their 7600 chassis and it’s SIPs, SPAs and hot tubs

By: Aaron

Aaron — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 13:34:09 +0000

Good stuff, Greg. I’ve never really dealt with 6513s that much, but, when I have seen them, they’ve always been populated below the Sup. This explains why.

I always had a dislike for the stating of bandwidth as the sum of input and output. Yes, the port/interface/module/yourmama can handle that much traffic at once, but, in a lot of situations, I’m only interested in sending traffic from A to B, so I only care about one direction for the most part.

Thanks for the info, Greg.

By: Marko Milivojevic

Marko Milivojevic — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 11:37:11 +0000

Since they sell 4x10GE line card as not oversubscribed, I can only assume it’s 20+20.

By: Ivan Pepelnjak

Ivan Pepelnjak — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 05:55:59 +0000

Thank you! Very clear and illustrative I’m assuming when you talk about 20 Gbps connections, they are really 10 Gbps (in+out)?

By: mrz

mrz — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 04:22:08 +0000

Cisco was less forthcoming about this or at least on this level of detail when we built out our Phoenix location.

Like you said in your observations, this does “outline some of the issues that a Data Centre designer needs to understand” and is what drove us over to Juniper for Phoenix.

By: RenÈ Jorissen

RenÈ Jorissen — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 22:33:44 +0000

Clear and to the point. Nice article!!