6500 pfc & msfc requirements

[rajeshk200_2]

Hi all,

i am really confused with 6000 architecture ie: is it mandatory to have pfc and msfc on every box or only msfc will do.

what are funtionalities of pfc and msfc ?

i have one more qn.

for inter vlan routing we have enable mls or not ?

where exactly we have to enable mls?

ur responses will be highly appreciated.

Rgds,

rajesh

[amit-singh · Accepted solution]

Hi Rajesh,

Every Sup must have to have the PFC. No sup comes without PFC. Now its depends whether you want MSFC or not. For example

Sup1A-2GE is the sup with PFC only and its completely Layer 2 BOX.

Sup1A-MSFC is the boc with PFC and MSFC.

PFC is the policy feature card has a Layer 2 forwarding engine (Cam table), ACL engine ( for ACL and QOS entires), L3 forwarding egine which caches the L3 entris for MLS/CEF.

MSFC is a router which is used for routing and L-3 forwarding.

You can enable MLS only with Sup1. For intervlan routing its not mandatory to have the MLS enable but its always recommended to have for better performance otherwaise there will be extra load on router for forwarding each and every packet and hence the performance issue.

You have to enable MLS on the router itself and all the route entries get cache on the PFC itself and then all the respective requestes for the entries are hardware switched.

HTH,

-amit singh

[rajeshk200_2]

Hi Amit ,

Understood , Thanx for the response.

Rgds,

Rajesh

[Prashanth Krishnappa]

Your statement "Every Sup must have to have the PFC. No sup comes without PFC." is not true.

The following Supervisors do not have PFC in it

WS-X6K-SUP1-2GE

WS-X6K-SUP1A-2GE

The orderable part number for a Sup with Just PFC are

WS-X6K-SUP1A-PFC

WS-X6K-S2-PFC2=

[amit-singh]

Sorry PrKrishn, I just forgot it..

regards,

-amit singh

[mvervoorn]

Hi Rajesh

The MSFC provides multiprotocol routing of multilayer switching (MLS) (Layer 3 switching) for the Catalyst 6000 family switch Ethernet interfaces. MLS is supported for IP, IP Multicast, and Internetwork Packet Exchange (IPX) protocols.

MLS, or Layer 3 switching, integrates routing with switching to yield very high routing throughput. To provide MLS, the MSFC, which resides on the supervisor engine, runs Cisco IOS router software to communicate with the rest of the logic on the supervisor engine via the Interprocessor Communication (IPC) bus

The PFC maintains a Layer 3 switching table (the Layer 3 MLS cache) for Layer 3-switched flows. The cache also includes entries for traffic statistics that are updated in tandem with the switching of packets. After the MLS cache is created, packets identified as belonging to an existing flow can be Layer 3-switched based on the cached information. The MLS cache maintains flow information for all active flows.

You need to enable mls

You can enable it on the MSFC.

You need to enable this at the interface mode

command msl ....

Kind regards,

Maarten