Cisco Catalyst 6500/Cisco 7600 Series Supervisor Engine 720

The Cisco ® Catalyst ® 6500/Cisco 7600 Series Supervisor Engine 720 is a family of Supervisor Engine(s) designed to deliver scalable performance and rich set of IP features in hardware. Its hardware-based feature set enables applications such as traditional IP forwarding, Layer 2 and Layer 3 Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) VPNs, Ethernet over MPLS (EoMPLS) with quality of service (QoS) and security features. The Supervisor engine 720 integrates a high-performance 720 Gbps crossbar switch fabric with a forwarding engine in a single module, delivering 40 Gbps of switching capacity per slot (enabling 4-port 10GE and 48-port 10/100/1000 density line cards). With hardware-enabled forwarding for IPv4, IPv6 and MPLS, the system performance is capable of 400 Mpps for IPv4, 200 Mpps for IPv6 traffic, with features and 1024 VRFs each populated with up to 700 routes/VRF for MPLS.
The Cisco Supervisor Engine 720 offers a strong set of security features. System security is hardened with support for features such as Port Security, CPU rate limiting, Multi-Path uRPF and a long list 802.1x extension. Extensive feature support such as QoS mechanisms, hardware-based generic-routing-encapsulation (GRE) tunneling, and access control lists (ACLs) enable customers to build high-performance, feature-rich campus networks, metropolitan (metro) aggregation, and various WAN edge networks.
With enhanced security, rich QoS and scalable performance for Gigabit and 10gigabit, the Sup720 is ideal for enterprise core and distribution and datacenters.
The Supervisor Engine 720 builds on the proven Cisco Express Forwarding (CEF) architecture, by supporting centralized forwarding (CEF) and distributed forwarding (dCEF). The variants of PFC3 distinguish the various Supervisor 720 families of engines. There are three flavors, PFC3A, PFC3B and PFC3BXL, correspond to WS-SUP720, WS-SUP720-3B and WS-SUP720-3BXL. The Supervisor Engine 720 family is supported on both operating systems-Cisco Catalyst OS ® and Cisco IOS ®.
The Supervisor Engine 720 delivers scalable-performance, intelligence, and a broad set of features to address the needs of the most demanding service provider and enterprise deployment requirements for building modular, resilient, scalable, and secure layer 2 or layer 3 solution by:

• Delivering scalable forwarding Performance: up to 400 Mpps1 IPv4 and 200 MppsText Box: 1 IPv6 with dCEF
• Multi Protocol Label Switching support (MPLS) in hardware: enabling the use of VPNs and layer 2 tunneling while improving traffic engineering for QoS
• Delivering up to 40 Gbps per slot of switching capacity; 720 Gbps aggregate bandwidth
• Providing support for new high performance next generation gigabit and 10Gigabit interfaces
• Protecting customer's investment, supporting all three generations of Catalyst 6500 series interfaces and service module configurations
• Supporting all 3 generations of Catalyst 6500 series interfaces, services modules and WAN interfaces
• Enabling an increase in chassis interface port density and services module configurations
The Supervisor Engine 720's PFC3 and MSFC3 provide the numerous functions:

MSFC3
The MSFC3 is an integral part of the Supervisor Engine 720, providing high performance, multilayer switching and routing intelligence. Equipped with a high performance processor, the MSFC runs layer 2 protocols on one CPU and layer 3 protocols on the second CPU. These include routing protocol support, layer 2 protocols (Spanning Tree Protocol and VLAN Trunking Protocol for example), and security services.
The MSFC builds the Cisco Express Forwarding information Base (FIB) table in software and then downloads this table to the hardware Application-specific-integrated circuits (ASICs) on the PFC3 and Distributed forwarding engine (if present) that make the forwarding decisions for IP unicast and multicast traffic.

PFC3
The Supervisor Engine 720 features the PFC3, which is equipped with a high-performance ASIC complex supporting a range of hardware-based features. The PFC3 supports routing and bridging, QoS, and multicast packet replication, and processes security policies such as access control lists (ACLs).
The Supervisor engine 720 has a field-upgradeable Policy Feature Card3. The PFC3 is equipped with a high performance ASIC complex supporting a range of hardware based features. The PFC3 supports IPv4, IPv6 routing and bridging functionality, quality of service (QoS) and multicast forwarded and ACL-based policies.

Features and Benefits
The Supervisor Engine 720 with integrated fabric delivers scalable-performance, user-based rate limiting enforcing up to 64 policy rates, rate limiting on per-flow or aggregate basis, security enhancements and wire-rate MPLS and IPv6 hardware support. This section also provides Cisco 6500 Series Virtual Switching Supervisor 720 with 10GE uplinks functionality for completeness.