supervisor engine

[o.hassairi]

i'm confusing in choosing the suitable supervisor engine for a cat 6506 switch.

we require that this swich be layer 3 and 4 enabled.

i think that WS-X6K-SUP1A-MSFC or WS-X6K-S1A-MSFC2 could be suitable?

but not WS-X6K-SUP1A-2GE. am i right?

then , could you tell me what is the difference between MSFC & MSFC2?

thx

[rfroom]

You are correct, you will need an MSFC or MSFC2 to do layer 3 and 4 on the Cat6k. The differences in the MSFC and MSFC2 is in software performance. The MSFC can do about 170 kpps while the MSFC2 can do 650 kpps. Keep in mind, that in most environments, the MSFC will not forwarding the traffic since its the Cat6k does multilayer switching.

[DALE FRANCIS]

Depends on traffic throughput needed. All reasons justified the MSFC2 is a faster card and obviously wil provide better future investment in technological terms.

MSFC2 and SUP2 use purely CEF which in most ways is very good and Cisco has ironed out a lot of the original CEF bugs, so for future proofing and pure grunt i would aim for the MSFC2.

The MSFC2 offers enhanced scalability via a 4 times increase in control plane and software switching performance over that of MSFC. This translates into a significant performance enhancement for all applications

So CEF-based architecture is made up of a FIB and an adjacency table is created for Layer 3 forwarding. This FIB has the most current routing information and eliminates the need for the first packet of every flow to be switched in software.

[o.hassairi]

thx for your responses

do i need a PFC too for the 6k to become layer 3 & 4?

is it a hardware card like the MSFC?

thx

[DALE FRANCIS]

If you want the L3 and L4 manipulation to take place in ASIC, yes most definately, the SUP2 with MSFC2 comes with a PFC2 as far as i recall.

The PFC can do all traffic classification, VLAN ACL and QoS ACL and does the actual L3 switching somtimes refered to as MLS.

[rfroom]

MSFC or MSFC2 requires the use of a PFC. If you order a SupII you will get a PFC2.