Cisco bolsters Catalyst range

Cisco has bolstered it flagship Catalyst  6500 Series Switches. The new refresh provides Catalyst 6500 customers with the capability to evolve their network infrastructure for the coming decade’s  proliferation of connected devices, growth of video traffic, cloud computing business models and increasingly mobile workforces—without requiring “rip and replace” upgrades.

Cisco claims since its introduction in 1999, the Catalyst platform has a $42 billion installed base, nearly 700,000 systems/110 million ports deployed and more than 25,000 customers worldwide.

“By closely working with our massive customer base, Cisco is able to focus our innovation on real-world requirements. This is why the Catalyst platform spurred the spread of the Internet on campus networks worldwide and is now enabling these same networks to evolve to 10 gigabits and 40 gigabits while taking advantage of a full range of network services in the campus and the data center—no ‘rip and replace’ required. The relationship between installed base knowledge, innovation and business value results in greater competitive differentiation and industry leadership for Cisco, its customers and partners.”

At the heart of the makeover is the introduction of the highly anticipated Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series Supervisor Engine 2T, a 2-terabit card that unlocks 80 gigabits per second per slot, new feature-rich 10-gigabit and 10-Gigabit Ethernet line cards, and next-generation borderless services that provide customers with new mobility, security, network analysis and load balancing capabilities.

The new supervisor engine, claims the company, can increase the throughput capability of the Catalyst 6500 from 720 Gbps to 2 Tbps, a threefold increase. It can also quadruple the number of devices or users that can connect to a network. For example, a single Catalyst 6500 can now support up to 10,000 mobile devices.

More than 200 new technical features have been added to Cisco IOS Software to meet growing security, mobility, application, voice/video, and virtualization demands.The Catalyst 6500 is also the first platform to offer IPv6 First Hop Security features (such as device tracking, Neighbor Discovery Protocol Inspection, and IPv6 per-port address limits) so customers can continue to grow their networks with a high assurance of security as they transition from IPv4 to IPv6