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Cisco Nexus : M series modules Features and Comparison

Well this article will talk about the use of the M module which is used in the Cisco Nexus 7000 and Cisco Nexus 7700 product family. As you know these Cisco Nexus 7000 and Cisco Nexus 7700 are  datacenter core switching family.

First let me talk about the complete family and the models in it, The Cisco Nexus core switch platform includes the 7000 series switches and the newer 7700 series switches. The 7000 series switches are comprised of the 7004 (4 slot), 7006 (6 slot), 7009 (9 slot), 7010 (10 slot) and 7018 (18 slot). The 7700 series switches are comprised of the 7706 (6 slot), 7710 (10 slot) and 7718 (18 slot) switches.

 The Nexus switches are high performance distribution and core switches that have features unique to the Nexus platform such as FabricPath, OTV and multiple fabric modules for increasing capacity. In addition the Supervisor Engine 1, 2 and 2E are specific to Nexus switches. Most of the line cards support layer 2 and layer 3 forwarding. 

Lets talk about the M module used in the Nexus Environment, Cisco Nexus 7000 M1-Series 32-Port 10Gb Ethernet Module with 80 Gbps of bandwidth to the fabric is a high-performance, high-density 10 Gigabit Ethernet module designed for mission-critical Ethernet networks. Up to 512 ports of 10 Gigabit Ethernet are supported in a single system in the Cisco Nexus 7000 18-Slot Switch chassis, providing a high-density, compact solution for the largest 10 Gigabit Ethernet networks.

The M module forwarding engine delivers 60 million packets per second (Mpps) of Layer 2 and 3 IPv4 unicast forwarding or 30 Mpps of IPv6 unicast forwarding across all ports on a single I/O module. Taking an example of 18 slot chassis, An 18-slot chassis with 16 M1 I/O modules delivers up to 960 Mpps of IPv4 unicast forwarding. 

Below is a comparison between some of the M modules used in the Cisco Nexus 7000 and Cisco Nexus 7700 Chassis.
Comparison between the below mentioned Network Modules 
  •  N7K-M148GS-11 
  •  N7K-M148GS-11L 
  •  N7K-M148GT-11 
  •  N7K-M148GT-11L 
  •  N7K-M108X2-12L 
  •  N7K-M132XP-12 
  •  N7K-M132XP-12L 

Fig 1.1- M Modules Comparison
Multicast forwarding is built into the I/O module that performs egress replication. The M module forwarding engine also delivers access control list (ACL) filtering, marking, rate limiting, and NetFlow with no degradation of performance. Powerful ACL processing supports up to 64,000 entries per module, where entries can address Layer 2, 3, and 4 fields in addition to new Cisco metadata fields that employ security group tags (SGTs)

I will talk about M2 and M3 modules in the later article, here we only discussed on the M1 modules used in the Nexus environment.