Real differences between Cat 6500 and 7600

[c.vidal]

I need to know the real difference between the catalyst 6500 and the router 7600.

When should use one or the other?

they possess important features differences?

Thanks

[dathaide]

You normally use the Catalyst 6500 to connect vlans together. Say you have a 30 story building and each floor is on its own vlan which it should. Then those vlans physically terminate on a 6500. Also called a Layer 3 switch.

The 7600 router is a true router and alhough you can do vlan routing on it its primary use is to provide a connection to remote offices. For example it could terminate a DS3 or a frame relay circuits to your remote locations.

Thus in conclusion primary role of 6500 is switching and 7600 is routing.

The cisco website probably has a better explaining and so does the CCNP books. Hope this gets you thinking in the right direction

thanks

[c.vidal]

thanks for your assitance

[steinar.haug]

The 6500 with MSFC2 and PFC2 can do routing just fine - it's a true router too.

The real difference between 6500 and 7600 is marketing.

(Before Sup720 came along, you could explain it simply as: 7600 equals 6500 with Sup2/MSFC2/PFC2 and at least one OSM.)