I have a fully DFC3B enabled 6509-E running a mix of sup 720-3B and DFC3B enabled line cards. Now I'm in need of some PoE (preferably PoE+ 802.3at) ports. I thought about aquiring a PoE enabled line cards for the 6500-E, because for my scenario it'll be cheaper and easier to implement than a stand-alone switch. Bad luck, only classic (?) generation PoE enabled line cards exists. My question is: If I insert a classic line card (For example a WS-X6148E-GE-45AT or WS-X6548-GE-45AF), will it degrade the performance of my DFC3B system, or will it only affect traffic flowing through that specific non-DFC3B line card? Stated differently: will the presence of a classic line card in a DFC3B system degrade the performance of the entire system to some older centralized forwarding standard? The topic is mentioned in this Q&A, however mixing classic line cards and dCEF720 modules isn't mentioned specifically.
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