Catalyst 8500 Series Overview:

The Catalyst 8500 series Multiservice Switch Routers integrate multiservice ATM switching with wire-speed Layer 3 switching for Gigabit Ethernet into a single platform that also supports advanced Cisco IOS services. The Catalyst 8500 family delivers campus and metropolitan network solutions with scalable performance, lower cost of ownership, and the features needed by intranet-based applications to deliver increased business productivity.

Historically, enterprise network managers faced a choice of several different technologies when building or upgrading campus network backbones. Today, the choice is between Fast Ethernet/Gigabit Ethernet on one hand, which provides high performance, low cost, and familiarity (relative to Ethernet), and ATM on the other hand, with its high performance, advanced QoS capabilities, support for multiservice voice/data integration and metro/wide area extendability. The network designer must also think about the role of routing in the backbone, which is required for network scalability. The Catalyst 8500 family takes the risk out of this choice by supporting Fast Ethernet/Gigabit Ethernet, ATM, and wire-speed multiprotocol routing in a single platform. This combination enables network designers to combine multiple technologies in a single network, using each to its best advantage.

High-Performance Campus Backbone

The Catalyst 8500 series provides the high bandwidth and performance that is required for a campus backbone and it is ideal for aggregating multiprotocol traffic from multiple wiring closets or from workgroup switches such as the Catalyst 5000/5500.

The Catalyst 8500 series can be deployed as a Layer 3 switch providing nonblocking routing for IP, IPX, and IP multicast.

The Catalyst 8500 series can also be deployed as a multiservice ATM switch or as an integrated Layer 3 and multiservice ATM switch.

Catalyst 8540 Overview

The Catalyst 8540 provides a 40-Gbps switching fabric with aggregate throughput of 24 million packets per second (pps) for Layer 3 switching. Deployed as an ATM switch, the Catalyst 8540 provides wire-speed nonblocking switching on all interfaces.The Catalyst 8540 uses a 13-slot, modular chassis with optional dual, fault-tolerant, load-sharing power supplies. The Catalyst 8540 can be deployed with optional, redundant route processors and optional, redundant switch processors. Typically the devices are deployed as redundant systems within a campus providing the ultimate in redundancy as redundant systems can back each other up and provide incremental bandwidth and performance.

Catalyst 8540 Layer 3 Highlights

When deployed with the C8541-RP route processor and two C8542-SP switch processors, the Catalyst 8540 is equipped as a Layer 3 switch. The section below summarizes the Layer 3 features.

Catalyst 8540 Switch Router

• Thirteen-slot chassis and fan tray
• Optional redundant AC or DC, autosensing, load-sharing power supplies, each with its own power cord
• C8541CSR-RP and C8542CSR-RP modules running Layer 3 Cisco IOS software or C8545-MRP and C8546-MSP modules running ATM and in the future ATM and L3 Cisco IOS software
• 40-Gbps shared memory, nonblocking fabric
• 8 MB of Flash memory standard, internally expandable up to 16 MB, plus up to 20 MB through PC Flash cards
• 256 MB DRAM system memory
• Ethernet port for out-of-band management
• Dual EIA/TIA-232 serial ports (console, auxiliary port)

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