Sup V and Sup II - 10GE related

fahim · ‎10-19-2007

Something is odd here:

I was looking at Cisco Catalyst 4500 Series Supervisor Engine II-Plus-10GE, datasheet here:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/modules/ps2797/products_data_sheet0900aecd80356bde.html

I realised that if I use this on Cat 4506 or 4507R chassis, I'll get a switching fabric of 108Gbps on each.

On the contrary, Table 2 of the same link above depicts that;

Layer 2-4 Performance of Supervisor Engine II-Plus-10GE is 108 Gbps AND that of Supervisor Engine V-10GE is 136 Gbps.

What should I be concerned about? Switching fabric or L2/3 performance?

Obviously SUP V has higher performance on L2-3 front.

Now if I browse through;

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/modules/ps2797/products_data_sheet09186a00801fcaba.html

I see that;

Evn though, Supervisor Engine V L2-4 performance is stated to be 96gbps, it's switching fabric support for 4506 Chassis is mere 64 Gbps, and that of 4507R is mere 68 Gbps.

Much worse for the two Catalyst models than that of Sup II + 10GE.

Am I missing something here or is my analysis correct? Is Sup V giving worse performance than Sup II plus?

Edison Ortiz · ‎10-19-2007

Please refer to:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/switches/ps4324/products_data_sheet0900aecd803fae7d.html

SupII-Plus-10GE is a next generation Supervisor module and a fair comparison must be done against the SupV-10GE

Another thing to keep in mind, Supervisor II only provides basic routing features. If your network consists of OSPF or you want to run full EIGRP (not EIGRP stub), then your only option is SupIV and above.

fahim · ‎10-19-2007

Edison, I intend to use Sup II+10GE or Sup V on my 4507Rs on the access layer within my IDF on about 20 floors of a building with datacenter (MDF) located on 10th.

MDF has the core switch comprising of dual 6509s.

Access Layer 4507Rs are not doing much of L3 except forwarding all the traffic to core.

Do you see any need for OSPF or EIGRP or RIPv2 with EIGRP-stub will suffice?

Should I consider Sup V 10ge?

Edison Ortiz · ‎10-20-2007

If you have budget constraints, go with the SupII+ 10GE instead of the Sup V. Sup V is intended to be used at the distribution or core layer.

EIGRP stub should be sufficient if you decide to go with L3 routed ports instead of L2 links between switches.

fahim · ‎10-20-2007

Allright...will go with Sup II+ 10GE

Just one more thing that's a bit confusing.

On the link here:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/switches/ps4324/products_data_sheet0900aecd801792b1.html

...it's mentioned that I get 108Gbps throughput by using SupII+ 10Ge on 4507R chassis.

My concern is, if I intend to use, switched 10/100/1000BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet with IEEE 802.3af PoE line cards, on all available 5 slots (utilising full 240 ports -full density), how much througput would I get to the backplane fabric on each line card?

Supposing, the back panel connectivity is a maximum of 5GB per line card (where can I get the exact figure for this?), does this mean that when I get a max of 30Gb (5LCx5gbit each)) fabric connectivity from my 5 line cards off 240 gbit(48ports x 5Line cards) ports, it doesn't make much of a difference even if SupII+ 10GE has fabric connectivity of 108Gbps with 4507 backplane?

In such a case, what defines my switch fabric rating?

Edison Ortiz · ‎10-21-2007

The magic number per module is 6Gbps, see:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/switches/ps4324/products_data_sheet0900aecd802109ea.html