Cisco pours on the Gig Ethernet ports

By Phil Hochmuth
Network World, 06/18/01

SAN JOSE - Cisco last week released a new version of its Catalyst 6500 backbone switch with room for four more modules and almost twice as many Gigabit Ethernet ports as its current high-end LAN chassis.

The 13-slot Catalyst 6513 could help users who want to put feature switch modules - such as intrusion detection or WAN interface modules - into a Catalyst 6500 chassis but are afraid of running out of slots for server or end-user connection blades. The switch could also serve users who need a high density of Fast and Gigabit Ethernet ports in one chassis.

Two Catalyst 6513s will be deployed this month at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a San Francisco research laboratory run by the U.S. Energy Department and the University of California. The lab uses eight Catalyst 6509 switches in its backbone for connecting PCs, servers and two IBM supercomputers over a Gigabit Ethernet network. The 6513s will replace two nine-slot 6509s used to connect the supercomputers and storage devices over trunked, multigigabit links, says Dave Wiltzius, network division leader at the lab.

"More Gigabit ports is a big thing for us. We're quickly running out of space with the 6509s we have now," he says. "The impact on a network can be profound when you put one of these big computers online."

Wiltzius plans to outfit 10 of the 13 slots on both 6513s with Gigabit Ethernet switch port modules, which should give him some room for expansion.

The 6513 can support 194 Gigabit Ethernet connections - the most in a single-chassis LAN switch in the industry - 576 10/100 ports, or a mix of the two speeds. Up to 12 ATM OC-12 ports are also supported in the chassis for connecting redundant chassis, or for intercampus switch-to-switch connections.

Cisco also introduced a new Switch Fabric Module 2 specifically for the Catalyst 6513. The new module, which performs internal module-to-module connections, has the same backplane speed as the Switch Fabric Module (SFM) for other 6500 series switches - 256G bit/sec - and is compatible with other Catalyst 6500s. The older SFM is not compatible with the 6513.

"Only the largest of enterprises will be interested" in the 6513, says Joel Conover, senior analyst at Current Analysis. "This box has way more capacity than most businesses need."

Companies that buy the 6513 will do so for investment protection, Conover says, "or for enabling some of these value-added services - like [intrusion-detection services] and network analysis - without really cutting into the number of slots in the chassis."

Chief competitors for the Catalyst 6500 series include Enterasys Networks' X-Pedition (formerly the Cabletron SmartSwitch Router), Extreme Networks' BlackDiamond, Foundry Networks' BigIron and the Passport 8600 from Nortel. Last year, Cisco beat all comers in the modular LAN switch market, shipping 18.2 million 10/100 ports and 1.3 million gigabit ports, according to market research firm IDC, giving the company 65% market share in both categories.

The Catalyst 6513 is available now and costs $16,000, and the Switch Fabric Module 2 costs $11,000.