Cat6509 populating

[londint]

We have 2x 6509 with 1x8GBIC module. All the 8 GBICs have been populted with a combination of 4003 and 4006 . We need to add more 4006 but have no more GBIC interface.

Firstly, i was thinking of swapping the 1x8GBIC for a 1x16GBIC but I want to know how many 4000 series switches can be fed into a 6509 without any performance issue?

Thanks

[ahbanks]

What kind of applications are running over this network? Is this mostly telnet, or are you doing lots of multimedia/video/voice? MSFCs or external routers?

The short answer is that you can put 7x16 GE ports into the 6509 switch, so you could feed 112 switches. This would work fine for telnet-type traffic, but multimedia might suffer. (NOTE: This is reserving 2 slots for supervisor modules.

A better answer is 5x16, allowing 2 slots for supervisors and 2 slots for switch fabric modules, which will increase your performance. Additionally, you can use Etherchannel to bundle multiple GE interfaces to each 400X switch.

HTH...