Catalyst 4006 vs 4506

[dshapin]

Hi,

I am planning to upgrade all our Cat5505 and Cat5509 switches with either Cat4006 or Cat4506 switches and connect them via GBICs..

We have about 400 ports, 100 each on the 5505 switches and 200 on the 5509.

I like the Cat 4000 series, I have 4003 and 4006 switches another location and have had no problems.

I am trying to decide if I should go with the newer 4500 series.

Both the 4006 and 4506 support inline power for voip phones, the only difference as far I can tell is the Cat4506 supports a redundant Supervisor.

Also, if I select the 4006, should I go with the Sup2, or Sup3? The Sup3 is about $16,000 more, is it worth it? If I go with the Sup2 I can route VLANS via our 3640 router. If I go with the Sup3 I can route vlans in the switch. How much faster is the Sup3?

The Sup4 is only if you use the 4506 and want redundancy, otherwise there is no difference between the Sup3.

What do you think?

Thanks.

Dan.

[steven-dunn]

designing ressillient networks starts at layer one and the biggest problem with the 4006s is power. Smart implementations use power feeds from multiple circuit breakers, with three power supplies you will need three circuits. If two power supplies are on the same circuit, redundancy is lost. A resillient network demands redundant sups. The feature to perform inter VLAN routing is a must if you have 200 machines on one switch, a question is "do you want the routing to occur on this switch" or do you existing 5000s switches have RSMs.

I do not reccommend installing 200 user ports (5 blades with 48 ports) on one 4006.

[dshapin]

If I had a bigger budget I would go with the cat 6500 series. What would you suggest instead? I need 100mb minimum to the desktop, gigabit to the desktop would be even better. Running high-end graphic applications with huge files 500mb in size.

Thanks.

Dan

[czisimides]

Hi Dan,

We have two 4006s, one with the SupII engine + Layer 3 Blade, the other 4006 with the SupIII engine. I would definitely recommend buying the SupIII if your budget will allow, It is far superior to the SupII and I found it easier to configure.

We are planning to buy either one 6500 or two 4006s SupIII this Summer - the 6500 is more expensive but will probably give us a better degree of future proofing whereas the two 4006s will actually give us better redundancy.

[ahojmark]

First the 4006 vs. 4506.

4506 can have to PSUs running 1+1 redundancy. The 4006 can have tre PSUs for 2+1 redundancy (it needs two to run). In practice that means you need three separate power groups to achive redundancy for the power with the 4006 but only two with the 4506.

4506 can provide inline power using only the two internal power supplies (not the 1000W PSUs, though). The 4006 needs an external power chassis to provide inline power. Adding inline power to the 4506 is much cheaper than with the 4006.

4006 is slightly smaller than the 4506 (40x43.7x30 cm vs 44.13x43.97x31.70 cm).

Finally, the 4506 is 'the new box' and I wouldn't rule out the possiblity that features might be implemented on the 4506, that can't be implemented on the 4006.

I would go with the 4506.

Second, the Sup2 vs. Sup3/Sup4.

First, Sup2 is a 'pure' L2 supervisor. It won't do stuff such as ACLs and QoS based on L3 or L4. Sup3/Sup4 are of cause true 'L3 switches' (routers) and also have strong ACL and QoS capabilities.

Second, Sup2 is conceptually three separate 12 Gbps switches, which are interconnected with 1 Gbps connections. Depending on your traffic pattern, that could lead to *heavy* internal blocking. In contrast, the Sup3/Sup4 are true 32 Gbps switches (marketing would call that 64 Gbps, of cause), providing 6 Gbps non-blocking to each blade, plus two on the Sup itself.

Oh, and the Sup2 runs CatOS, which Sup3/Sup4 runs IOS.

Whether the Sup2 or Sup3/Sup4 would be appropriate, depends on what you're expecting it to do. As you say, Sup3/Sup4 will do inter-VLAN routing, and will do so at close to wire rate. In contrast, the 3640 wouldn't give you more than maybe 40 Mbps.

If you go with the L3 supervisors, pick the Sup4. It does all the Sup3 does and then some (faster CPU, possibillity to do NetFlow accounting, can be run redundantly in the 4507R chassis). And they're 1,5 k$ cheaper than the Sup3s, so to me that choice is a no-brainer.

-A

[jcarr]

If you are using inline power for IP phones, I would strongly recommend the 4506. I have a mix. Most of my access switches are 4006's and the auxillary power shelf and it's associated cabling is a mess. 6 power cables + 3 DC cables. And both the APS & 4006 require 2 of the 3 supplies to work in each unit so while you are protected from a PS failure, you cant connect to 2 independent sources. The 4506 fixes all of that with 2 big power supplies (downside is that they are 208v so you may need new circuits), either of which will run the box + loads.

If you don't care about inline power, the decision is less clear.

I don't do any L3 routing in the 4xxx edge switches so I use the simple Sup2's running CatOS (I also dislike IOS for switches but I'll probably have to get over that eventually). I have MSFCs in my 6509 core switches for routing.

[j.cumbo]

Dan,

one other thing to keep in mind is that the 4506 does not support redundant sup engines. You need the 4507r for that. The 4507r is functionally the same as a 4506, except it has an extra slot dedicated for a redundant sup IV

[dshapin]

Thanks for the replies everyone. I have decided to go with the 4506 with the SupIV module. I like the inline power support and 1+1 redundant power supplies.

Dan.

[aidan.hancock]

I went through this decision process recently, and I'd just say:

1. Get pricing on the 4507R w/Sup4 - we found it was very little more than the 4506, and well worth it should you ever want to run two Sup4s.

2. The early versions of IOS on the 4500 provided slow (very) non-IP Layer 3 switching. Whilst IP is hardware switched, non-IP is software only- so if you have large volumes of legacy traffic, be careful. The recent releases have improved the situation somewhat.

[eric]

For the least technical answer to the question.....

Keep in mind that Cisco's introduction of the 4500 series most likely is signaling the end of the 4000 series. If you can afford it, go for the newer chassis, it has a longer useable lifetime.

Eric