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Cisco 6K Switch Supervisor Engines ( SUP 6T Vs SUP 2T)

 I have been asked many times from many of the followers of the blogs about the SUP engines in Cisco catalyst 6k Series product mainly in Cisco 6500 Switches. Well first of all i would like to inform you that Cisco already announce Cisco 6500 chassis end of sale and also the previous SUP engines SUP-720 already end of life announcements.


As the question is related to Cisco 6500 Chassis only and the question is which chassis in Cisco 6500 Chassis supports SUP 2T and SUP 6T supervisor engines ?
Well the answer is SUP 2T and SUP 6T supported in the E-series 6500 chassis only. So if I am talking about the E-Series Chassis they are

  • Cisco Catalyst 6503-E 
  • Cisco Catalyst 6504-E
  • Cisco Catalyst 6506-E
  • Cisco Catalyst 6509-E
  • Cisco Catalyst 6509-V-E 
  • Cisco Catalyst 6513-E 

What are the capabilities of Cisco SUP 2T supervisor engines ?
Supervisor Engine 2T is designed to deliver higher performance, better scalability, and enhanced hardware enabled features. It integrates a high-performance 2-terabit (Tb) crossbar switch fabric that enables 80-Gbps switching capacity per slot on all Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series Switches.

Image of SUP 2T supervisor ?
Below is the image of the SUP 2T 

Fig 1.1- SUP 2T Supervisor Engine


Is SUP 2T and SUP 6T supported in Cisco 6800 Chassis ?
All Cisco 6800 series line cards are supported in a Cisco Supervisor Engine 2T and 6T Systems

When creating VSS in a network architecture, do we mix SUP 2T and SUP 6T with each other ?
No. With VSS, both supervisor engines must be the same.

What will be the MAC entries available in SUP 6T supervisor ?
128K MAC entries are allowed.

Image of SUP 6T Supervisor ?
Below is the image of the SUP 6T 
Fig 1.2- SUP 6T supervisor engine


What other features are supported in SUP 6T supervisor engines ?
Well some of the basic features supported in the SUP 6T are as below:
  • Port security
  • IEEE 802.1x and 802.1x extensions
  • VLAN and router ACLs and port ACLs
  • 1:1 mask ratio to ACE values
  • Security ACL entries
  • Private VLANs
  • MAC ACLs on IP
  • Layer 2 and Layer 3 Cisco TrustSec
  • Layer 2 encryption in hardware
  • CPU hardware rate limiters by PPS or BPS
  • Control Plane Policing (CoPP) for multicast
  • CoPP for exceptions (MTU, TTL)
  • CoPP exceptions NetFlow support
  • Hitless ACL changes

What is the difference between SUP 2T and SUP 6T supervisor engines ?
Well SUP 6T is the latest released by Cisco and has the high capacity and capability in the features. The basic difference is shown as below in both the SUP engines.


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