Catalyst 6500 doubt

[gopal_4476]

Hi,

Actually I am having doubt on catalyst 6500 family switch works on catos. It has two config file one for the supervison engine or Network Managemnet Processor (NMP) another one for Multilayer Switch Feture Card (MSFC). Just wanted to know

1)wht is supervisor engine and what is the role of this in catalyst 6500 or 4500 family???

2) what is the difference between the cisco catos and cisco ios???

3) what is the need for supervisor engine in catalyst switch or is there any specific reson for this??

need clarification on the above questions.

Regards

Gopal

[moorepl]

Hi

Supervisor engines running catos is responsible for switching frames(Layer 2), while the MSFC/RPC is responsible for routing(Layer 3). Catos is being phased out by Cisco and there are images now available to convert most 6509 Supervisors/MSFCs to Native IOS.