Catalyst 6500 Supervisors differencies Sup1A vs Sup32

[Alexey Stytsenko]

Good day everyone!

I understand that my questions seems to be rather strange cos supervisors is rather old (Sup1A especially). But i am interested in understanding what puprpose were in production SUP32. I cant find out enough differencies between Sup1A with MSFC2 and Sup32 to understand what reasons lead to deploying new sup in none fabric supervisor series.

Both supervisors have same perfomance - 15Mpps and have limitation on backplane bandwith of 32 Gbps (cos both use swithing bus), both supervisors equipped with MSFC2 and etc. Differencies i found:

• SUP 32 have 10Gbe ports support (but this seems to be doubtful enhancement -  with it perfomance GE ports seems to be more appropriate technology isnt it?)
• SUP1A equipped with PFC, SUP32 with PFC3B
• SUP32 deploys CEF (what is benefit of CEF if perfomance same?)

So can any1 help me with other differencies between those supervisors to make clear why upgrade of bus supervisors series were reasonable? And give answer on questions i post inside of topic.

[Alexey Stytsenko]

any suggestions?

[Joseph W. Doherty]

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Posting

Although the sup32 might only appear at first glance to be a "sup1b", there are other enhancements besides those you've listed.  See http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/switches/ps5718/ps708/prod_presentation0900aecd801dff30.pdf.

Perhaps there's even more "invisible" technical differences.  For example, there's the PISA variant, but perhaps that only possible with a sup32 "revision".

As to 10 gig interfaces and only 15 Mpps, well yes and no.  Considering whole chassis is limited to 32 Gbps bus (16 Gbps duplex), the bus can bottleneck the two 10 gig ports, and 15 Mpps, although not guaranteed wire-rate, is probably adequate for the 32 Gbps bus.

Lastly, if you wondering why even still have a bus only supervisor, consider the price difference for a wiring closet where there's often no huge advantage having fabric cards when most all traffic is "north-south" through a couple of uplinks.