Q & A
General
Q. What is the Cisco® Catalyst® 4500 Supervisor II-Plus-10GE?
A. The Cisco Catalyst 4500 Supervisor II-Plus-10GE is a new supervisor engine for Cisco Catalyst 4500 Series switches. The Supervisor Engine II-Plus-10GE provides two wire-rate 10-Gigabit Ethernet (GE) uplink ports (X2 optics) and four GE ports (SFP optics) on the face plate.
Table 1. Catalyst 4500 Supervisors Matrix
Q. What is the Catalyst 4500 Supervisor Engine Portfolio Positioning?
A. The Cisco Catalyst 4500 Series Supervisor Engine II-Plus-10GE rounds out the Supervisor Engine product portfolio. Customers are provided clear choices based on their feature and scalability requirements. The enhanced Layer 2 Gigabit Supervisor Engines (Supervisor II-Plus, Supervisor II-Plus-TS) have a clear migration path to an enhanced Layer 2 10-Gigabit Supervisor Engine (Supervisor II-Plus-10GE) or to a Layer 3 Supervisor (Supervisor IV). The Layer 3 Gigabit Supervisor Engine IV can migrate to the Layer 3, 10-Gigabit Supervisor Engine V-10GE. Similarly, there is a clear migration path from the enhanced Layer 2 Supervisor Engine II-Plus-10GE to the Layer 3 Supervisor Engine V-10GE. This migration path is made smoother with the proven investment protection of the Catalyst 4500 architecture. The customer can upgrade all the capabilities of all switch ports by merely upgrading the Supervisor Engine protecting their chassis, line card, and power supply investment.
Figure 1
Cisco Catalyst 4500 Supervisor Engine Portfolio Positioning
Q. What 10-GE optic is supported on the Supervisor II-Plus-10GE?
A. X2 form factor optics are supported. X2 optics are a smaller form factor than XENPAKs. They offer full optical compatibility. (See Table 2.)
Table 2. 10 GE Transceivers (X2)
Q. What GE optic is supported on the Supervisor II-Plus-10GE?
A. GE Small Form-Factor Pluggable (SFP) optics are supported.
Q. Are XENPAK 10-GE optics supported on the Supervisor II-Plus-10GE?
A. No. However, X2 and XENPAK are optically compatible. X2 uplinks on the Cisco Catalyst 4500 can be connected directly to XENPAK ports on a Cisco Catalyst 6500. The Cisco Catalyst 4500 requires a smaller optical transceiver in order to help ensure enough air flow around the unit to cool it adequately.
Q. How many and what types of uplink ports does the Supervisor II-Plus-10GE have?
A. The Supervisor II-Plus-10GE has two X2 (10-GE optics) and four SFP (GE optics) ports on the face plate.
Q. Can I use the two 10-GE and the four GE ports on the Supervisor II-Plus-10GE simultaneously?
A. Yes, the 10-GE links and the 1-GE links can be used simultaneously.
Q. If I put two Supervisor Engine II-Plus-10GEs in redundant mode in a Cisco Catalyst 4507R Switch, can I use four 10-GE links concurrently?
A. A maximum of two 10-GE ports and four GE ports can be active on the supervisor at one time. This is the case with one or two supervisor engines in a single chassis.
Q. If I have two Supervisor II-Plus-10GEs in redundant mode using 10-GE optics, which two 10-GE ports are active?
A. The two left-most ports 1/1 and 2/1.
Q. If I have two Supervisor II-Plus-10GEs in redundant mode using GE optics, which four GE ports are active?
A. The left-most ports 1/3, 1/4, 2/3, and 2/4.
Q. What happens to the 10-GE uplinks in the event of a supervisor failure?
A. The uplinks on the failed supervisor remains active and is now controlled by the newly active supervisor.
Q. Are four X2 optics required for resiliency in redundant mode?
A. No. When two supervisors are deployed in a chassis, only two X2 optics are necessary for resiliency. Because only two can be active, the remaining two would be cold standbys.
Q. Do you support full line rate, full duplex 10-GE on both 10-GE ports of the Supervisor II-Plus-10GE?
A. Yes, two 10-GE ports give 30 Mpps performance without taking bandwidth from the line cards.
Q. Are Catalyst Integrated Security Features supported?
A. Yes, see Table 1; TCAM entries are the same as SupII-Plus.
Q. Are QoS capabilities the same as Supervisor Engine II-Plus?
A. Yes, see Table 1.
Technical
Q. Does the Supervisor II-Plus-10GE support Layer 2 through 4 jumbo frames?
A. Jumbo frames are only supported on nonblocking GE ports (as opposed to nonblocking 10/100). Nonblocking ports are all ports that do not traverse stub application-specific integrated circuits. See the Catalyst 4500 Series line card data sheet for specific information.
Q. How many hardware-based policers does the Supervisor II-Plus-10GE have?
A. The Supervisor II-Plus-10GE supports 508 policers on ingress and 508 policers on egress configured as aggregate or individual.
Q. Is the Supervisor II-Plus-10GE supported on the Cisco Catalyst 400X Switches?
A. No.
Q. Does the Supervisor Engine II-Plus-10GE support Q-in-Q, Multicast and Broadcast Suppression in Hardware?
A. Yes.
Q. Does the Supervisor Engine II-Plus-10GE support IPX, Appletalk, and VRF-Lite?
A. No.
Q. Does the Supervisor Engine II-Plus-10GE support EIGRP - Stub in the IP Base Image?
A. Yes.
