Cisco Supervisor Engines, Benefits

Supervisor Engine is a module that is installed in the Cisco Chassis-based Catalyst Switches or Routers. Supervisor engine contains nearly all the same components of a fixed Cisco Switches or Routers. These Supervisor engines come in a variety of different types with different functionalities and are installed in the Switches/Router Chassis as per requirements of the network types.

Benefits of Supervisor Engines

• By installing Latest Supervisor Engines in your existing investments (Switches and Routers) you can scale system performance and integrate next-generation services into your Networks.
• Within a single multilayer switch chassis, two supervisor modules with integrated route processors can be used to provide hardware redundancy. If an entire supervisor module fails, the other module can pick up the pieces and continue operating the switch

The supervisor engine contains the following integrated daughter cards that perform forwarding and routing and provide the protocols supported on the router.

Policy Feature Card (PFC) is the forwarding plane and does the following:

• Performs Layer 2 and Layer 3 forwarding.
• Enforces access control list (ACL) functions.
• Performs policing and marking for quality of service (QoS) traffic.

Multilayer Switch Feature Card (MSFC) is the control plane and does the following:

• Performs routing for the chassis. The MSFC contains the route processor (RP) and Switch processor (SP) for the router.
• Runs Layer 2 and Layer 3 protocols, such as the Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) and others.

You can View a 3D model of Catalyst 6500 Switch, here you can see how the Catalyst Switch 6500 looks like, Mount/Demount Supervisor engines, and other inserted modules, view short details of them by demounting from Chassis.

Specifications of Supervisor Engine

Supervisor Engine	Mpps	Switching Layer	Bandwidth	CPU Frequency	Max Ram	Max Flash	OS	Minimum IOS
1	15	2	1.2-32	25 MHz Motorola 68k	128MB	16MB	CatOS	N/A
2	30	2	18	150 MHz Mips R4700	128MB	16MB	CatOS	N/A
2+	48	4	64	266 MHz R4700	256MB	32MB	CatOS/IOS
3	15	4	?	150-300 MHz	256MB	?	IOS	12.1(8a)
4	48	4	64	333 MHz	512MB	64MB	IOS	12.1(12c)
5	136	4	102	400-800 MHz	512MB	?	IOS	12.2(18)
6	250	4	320	1.3 GHz	1GB	?	IOS	12.2(40)
720		5	720	400/200 (MHz?)	1GB	64MB	CatOS/IOS
32		5					IOS

Supervisor Engine I 68EC040 Chassis: 2900, 2948G, 2980G, 4000, 4500, 5000, 5500, 6000, 6500, 7600 Supervisor Engine II MIPS R4700 Chassis: 2926, 4000, 4500, 5000, 5500, 6000, 6500, 7600 Supervisor Engine II+ MIPS R4700 Cisco Express Forwarding Chassis: 2926, 4000, 4500, 5000, 5500, 6000, 6500, 7600 Supervisor Engine III Cisco Express Forwarding Max DRAM: 256MB SD Redundant Capable Netflow accelerator card Supervisor Engine IV Cisco Express Forwarding Max Flash: 64MB (supplemental Compact Flash optional)

Supervisor Engine V Cisco Express Forwarding Chassis: 4500 Supervisor Engine 6 Cisco Express Forwarding Chassis: 4500 “E” Series Supervisor Engine 32 Cisco Express Forwarding Chassis: 6000, 6500 A low cost, reduced version of the 720 Policy Feature Card 3b MSFC 2A? Supervisor Engine 720 Cisco Express Forwarding Policy Feature Card 3A, 3B, 3BXL Chassis: 6500, 7600 MSFC1-3 Multi-Layer Switch Feature Card