The supervisor engines for Catalyst 6000 family switches deliver the latest advanced switching technology with proven Cisco software to power a new generation of scalable, intelligent multi-layer switching solutions for both enterprise and service provider environments. The new Supervisor Engine 2 uses the latest ASIC technology, building upon the Supervisor Engine 1A to deliver next-generation features and services.
The new Supervisor Engine 2 is a key component of the new Cisco Express Forwarding (CEF)-based architecture that enables distributed forwarding. It also acts as the control module for the new Catalyst 6500 series architecture built around the crossbar fabric which scales the bandwidth to 256 Gbps. Supervisor Engine 2 is required to enable a Catalyst 6500 series with a 256-Gbps crossbar architecture. This module allows connections to both the existing bus and switch fabrics making it a suitable product for the entire Catalyst 6000 family. This also allows full investment protection for customers who hope to transition into the new architecture by allowing them to populate the chassis with classic (non fabric-enabled cards) as well as new fabric-enabled cards. Supervisor Engine 2 delivers the most advanced intelligent switching available in the industry, providing per-port application recognition, admission control, prioritization, and policing with multiple hardware queues to minimize network congestion and packet latency. This advanced Quality of Service (QoS) support is essential for enabling network-wide deployment of mission-critical applications and enterprise voice services and solutions. Supervisor Engine 2 further enhances performance with features like multicast replication in hardware, required for video streaming applications. This allows both enterprises and services providers to use multi-service applications without sacrificing performance