Welcome to the Cisco Support Community Ask the Expert conversation. This is an opportunity to learn and ask questions about the Cisco Catalyst 6800 Series Switches with Cisco expert Amer Atout.
Cisco Catalyst 6800 Series Switches are programmable campus backbone switches optimized for 10/40/100 Gigabit Ethernet services. They provide slot capacity of up to 880 G and smart and simple network operations using Cisco Catalyst Instant Access. These switches offer converged wired, wireless, and VPN security and exceptional investment protection with their Cisco Catalyst 6500 inheritance.
Amer Atout is a product manager for the Cisco Catalyst 6800 and 6500 Series Switches. He is responsible for promoting the next-generation supervisor module and fixed aggregation platforms. Previously, Amer was a customer escalation engineer for the Cisco Catalyst Access platforms, where he led in the resolution of escalated issues on Cisco Catalyst 4000, 3000, and 2000 products; increased customer satisfaction; and improved product quality. Amer holds a master's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and a bachelor's degree in computer engineering from the University of Jordan, Amman.
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Hello Leo,
Thanks for you interest in the Catalyst Instant Access technology. The Catalyst Instant Access can scale up to 2,000 switch ports (42 access switches) in one Instant Access domain managed by a VSS pair of Catalyst 6880-X-LE or Catalyst 6880-X.
For such large deployments as yours, we see customers deploy multiple Instant Access domains connected to a campus core switch such as the Catalyst 6807-XL with the C6800-32P10G cards. The resulting architecture will look like the following:
Traditionally, you have to manage more than 400 switches for your 20,000 switch port deployment. With Catalyst Instant Access, you have to manage only 10 virtual switches. Catalyst Instant Access technology simplifies the management and help reduce your TCO.
If you have more questions, please have your account manager contact me directly and I will be happy to discuss further.
Hi Eugene,
The decision of choosing between Catalyst and Nexus varies from customer to customer and depends on many factors including the position in the network and the feature set the customer is looking to use and deploy.
The Cisco Catalyst 6800 product line is focused on Video, Campus Segmentation, Application Visibility, and Smart Operations making it an ideal for Campus Backbone deployments (Campus Core and Aggregation layers). Features you find on this platform include Easy Virtual Networks, Flexible Netflow, Smart Install, and the Catalyst Instant Access.
Similarly, The Nexus product line is focused on DC Virtualization, LAN/SAN Convergence, Fabric Scale and Data Center Operations making it an ideal product for Data Center Core, Aggregation and DCI. Features you find on this platform include OTV, Multi-hop FCoE, FabricPath, and FEX.
Hope this helps.