The Cisco® Catalyst® 9600 Series switch is Cisco’s lead modular enterprise core switching platform and is part of the Catalyst 9000 family. Cisco Catalyst 9600 (with Supervisor 1) was introduced in mid 2019 to provide a migration path for Catalyst 6500/6800 series modular platforms by delivering unmatched software features and hardware performance. The Cisco Catalyst 9600 Series also provides foundational high-availability capabilities such as StackWise Virtual, ISSU, Patching, Graceful Insertion and Removal (GIR), Cisco Nonstop Forwarding with Stateful Switchover (NSF/SSO) and redundant platinum-rated power supplies & fans.
The Catalyst 9600 Series continues to shape the future with innovations to help reimagine connections, reinforce security and redefine the experience for Enterprise Campus Core and Edge. We are now introducing the new C9600X-SUP-2 along with the industry’s first purpose-built 400, 200, 100, 50, 40 and 10 Gigabit Ethernet line card to offer enterprise Campus Core and Edge requirements.
The Supervisor 2 brings in X-factor to the C9600 Series by not only providing higher bandwidth per slot but also deeper buffers and much higher scale to support internet routing tables. The Supervisor 2 has more bandwidth per slot and more forwarding scale relative to the Supervisor 1. It can support up to 6.4 Tbps (3.2 Tbps full-duplex) per slot with total capacity of 25.6 Tbps (12.8 Tbps full-duplex). This is over 2.5 times better performance compared to the Supervisor 1.
Figure 1. The Cisco Catalyst 9600X Series Supervisor Engine 2 with new combo line card
Catalyst 9600X Supervisor Engine 2
The new Catalyst 9600X Supervisor 2 is based on Cisco Silicon One Q200 Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC). This is the first network silicon to offer switching capacity up to 25.6 Tbps (12.8 Tbps full-duplex) in the enterprise and is purpose-built for the next generation core. The Cisco Silicon One Q200 ASIC is built on 7nm fabrication technology, capable of high performance, while maintaining a low power footprint. It offers high-performance full routing and switching capabilities without external memories.
With the Silicon One Q200 ASIC, Supervisor 2 can support up to 6.4 Tbps (3.2 Tbps full duplex) bandwidth per slot. Thus, Supervisor 2 is capable of supporting 32 ports of 100G (at line rate) in a single line card slot.
Figure 2. Cisco Catalyst 9600X Series Supervisor Engine 2
Catalyst 9600X SUP-2 Highlights
- 2.7-GHz x86 CPU with 8 cores and 32GB of DDR4 memory
- 80MB of dedicated low-latency buffer, with up to 8GB of High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) buffer
- Wire-rate forwarding with routing scale up to 2M routes and up to 256K MAC addresses
- ASIC customization with Flexible routing (IPv4, IPv6, and multicast) tables, Layer 2 tables, ACL tables, and QoS tables
- Up to 960GB of SATA SSD local storage for container-based application hosting (2x 10G SFP+ management ports)
Industry’s first 400GE Line Card for Campus - C9600-LC-40YL4CD
This C9600 Generation 2 line card offers 40-port of 10G/25G/50GE1, 2-port of 40G/100G/200GE1, 2-port of 40G/100G/200GE1/ 400GE ports. Since this combo speed line card provides variety of port speeds for both downlink and uplink requirements, users can now use a single line card slot for higher speed uplink ports and not dedicate additional line card slots for uplinks only. This line card can provide 6.4 Tbps (3.2 Tbps full duplex) bandwidth with Supervisor 2 and 2.4 Tbps (1.2 Tbps full-duplex) bandwidth when used with Supervisor 1.
1 Hardware capable
Figure 3. Cisco Catalyst 9600 Series C9600-LC-40YL4CD Line card
C9600-LC-40YL4CD Highlights
- Paired with C9600X-SUP-2, this line card is capable of providing up to 40 ports of 10/25/501 GE, 2 ports of 40/100/2001 GE and 2 ports of 40/100/2001/400 GE non-blocking
- Paired with C9600-SUP-1, this line card provides up to 40 ports of 25/10/1 GE and 2 ports of 40/100 GE non-blocking
- Advanced Encryption Standard 256 (AES-256) support with the powerful MACsec and WAN-MACsec encryption algorithm
1 Hardware capable
Up to 2X bandwidth boost on existing line cards with Supervisor 2
The Supervisor 2 is also backward compatible with C9600 Generation 1 line cards (C9600-LC-24C, C9600-LC-48YL, C9600-LC-48TX) to provide maximum investment protection. Moreover, with the power of Cisco Silicon One Q200 ASIC on Supervisor 2, C9600-LC-24C line card now supports 100G speed on all 24 ports as well as the C9600-LC-48YL line card is now capable of supporting 50G1 speed on all ports. C9600-LC-48TX line card also supports 10G Copper speed with Supervisor 2.
* Hardware capable
Table 1. Cisco Catalyst 9600 Series Supervisor Engine and line card support matrix
C9600-SUP1/C9600X-SUP2 for continued Enterprise Core & Edge Leadership
The Catalyst 9600 family of switches are continuing the leadership in Modular Core/distribution switches by providing full suite of Campus Core features along with higher performance & scale. Moreover, C9600 series platform provides variety of port density options for Enterprise campus core requirements.
1 Hardware capable
Table 2. Cisco Catalyst 9600 Series port speed matrix
With Supervisor 1, the C9600 series platform already provides best in class Core features set with hardware performance and scale for Catalyst 6500/6800 series non-XL deployments. It is ideal for Campus Core, Collapsed Core + Distribution deployments.
Figure 4. Cisco Catalyst 9600 Series Supervisor Engine deployment options
The new Supervisor 2 introduces higher port speeds (up to 8 ports of 400G) and superior hardware performance and scale (up to 2 million IPv4 routes, 256K MAC, and large buffer support) for migration of Catalyst 6500/6800 series XL deployments. With performance optimized Supervisor 2 and newly added IOS-XE features (such as WAN MACsec, Scaled MPLS, OGACL/SGACL), Supervisor 2 is ideal for Campus Core & Edge deployment.
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