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Supervisor Engine (Cisco)

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Management card for modular switches
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The Cisco Supervisor Engine serves as the management card for modular Cisco switches that can also, in some cases, act as forwarding/routing element.

Over time, the Supervisor Engine has undergone multiple iterations and was different for different modular switches in Cisco Portfolio (Catalyst 4000, 4500, 5000, 5500, 6000, 6500, 9400, 9600 and Nexus switches).

Supervisor Engine typically offers management of entire chassis in modular system, control over its power (PSU, Power Supply Units), cooling (fans) and physical management interfaces, as well as Line Cards (LCs) that host its own physical interfaces to serve user traffic.

Some models of Supervisor Engines can also process traffic, albeit at reduced scale and speed. Typically, traffic processing is distributed to line cards (LCs), which host their own NPUs (Network Processing Units) or ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuits) that are programmed by Supervisor to properly forward, filter and otherwise process user traffic. Supervisor Engines can also host switching matrix, that connects line cards together and allows for faster traffic transport between ports on different line cards, as well as can support traffic replication for multicast.

Cisco uses CEF (Cisco Express Forwarding) to create forwarding and routing tables, that in modular switches and routers is distributed using dCEF (distributed CEF). Line Cards that offer distributed forwarding & routing run their own copy of CEF tables thanks to dCEF.

Abridged list of features:

Specifications

Supervisor Engine Mpps Switching Layer Bandwidth CPU Frequency Max Ram Max Flash OS Minimum IOS
1 15 2 1.2–32 25 MHz Motorola 68k 128MB 16MB CatOS N/A
2 30 2 18 150 MHz Mips R4700 128MB 16MB CatOS N/A
2+ 48 4 64 266 MHz R4700 256MB 32MB CatOS/IOS
3 15 4 ? 150–300 MHz 256MB ? IOS 12.1(8a)
4 48 4 64 333 MHz 512MB 128MB IOS 12.1(12c)
5 136 4 102 400–800 MHz 512MB ? IOS 12.2(18)
6 250 4 320 1.3 GHz 1GB ? IOS 12.2(40)
720 400–450 5 720 600 MHz 2GB 64MB CatOS/IOS
32 5 32 300 MHz IOS
2T 720 5 2080 4GB 2GB IOS

Details

Supervisor Engine I

  • 68EC040
  • Chassis: 2900, 2948G, 2980G, 4000, 4500, 5000, 5500, 6000, 6500, 7600

Supervisor Engine II

  • MIPS R4700
  • Chassis: 2926, 4000, 4500, 5000, 5500, 6000, 6500, 7600

Supervisor Engine II+

  • MIPS R4700
  • Cisco Express Forwarding
  • Chassis: 2926, 4000, 4500, 5000, 5500, 6000, 6500, 7600

Supervisor Engine III

  • Cisco Express Forwarding
  • Max DRAM: 256MB SD
  • Redundant Capable
  • Netflow accelerator card

Supervisor Engine IV

  • Cisco Express Forwarding
  • Max Flash: 64MB (supplemental Compact Flash optional)

Supervisor Engine V

  • Cisco Express Forwarding
  • Chassis: 4500

Supervisor Engine 6

  • Cisco Express Forwarding
  • Chassis: 4500 "E" Series

Supervisor Engine 32

  • Cisco Express Forwarding
  • Chassis: 6000, 6500, 7600
  • A low cost, reduced version of the 720
  • Policy Feature Card 3b
  • MSFC 2A?

Supervisor Engine 720

  • Cisco Express Forwarding
  • Policy Feature Card 3A, 3B, 3BXL
  • Chassis: 6500, 7600

MSFC1-3

  • Multi-Layer Switch Feature Card

See also

References

  1. "Types of Cisco Switches > Implementing Cisco IP Switched Networks (SWITCH) Foundation Learning Guide: Network Design Fundamentals | Cisco Press". www.ciscopress.com. Retrieved 2023-06-13.
  2. Millions of Packets switched Per Second
  3. in gigabits
  4. "Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series Supervisor Engine 2T Data Sheet".
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