Cisco 4500 series catalyst Switches- Design and Features
Since Cisco 3850 Switch is widely used in the enterprise network in the distribution and the access layer, Cisco come up with another model named Cisco 4500 series switch which is widely used now a days at the core level of the 3 layer architecture in the enterprise network.
Like Cisco 3850 Switch, All Cisco 4500 series switches are ready for the DNA architecture, Since we already discussed about the DNA ( Digital Network Architecture ) in previous articles and is going to be the next generation networks. So these switches are coming up with the features who supporting the DNA architecture and can be used in near future as well without replacement or refresh of the network.
Every after 3 or 5 years, technology changes and enterprises come with the hardware refresh and interact with the vendors and partners to change the outdated technology hardware. Since next generation networks coming into the picture where everyone moving to the cloud, but you required the hardware to support the upcoming technology. So for the enterprise network Cisco 4500 series switches are widely accepted at the core and the distribution layer.
Like Cisco 3850 Switch, All Cisco 4500 series switches are ready for the DNA architecture, Since we already discussed about the DNA ( Digital Network Architecture ) in previous articles and is going to be the next generation networks. So these switches are coming up with the features who supporting the DNA architecture and can be used in near future as well without replacement or refresh of the network.
Every after 3 or 5 years, technology changes and enterprises come with the hardware refresh and interact with the vendors and partners to change the outdated technology hardware. Since next generation networks coming into the picture where everyone moving to the cloud, but you required the hardware to support the upcoming technology. So for the enterprise network Cisco 4500 series switches are widely accepted at the core and the distribution layer.
 |
| Fig 1.1- Cisco 4500 Series Switches at Core |
With the help of the Supervisor 8-E/8L-E, 4500E switches Cisco offer exceptional scalability and comprehensive features to meet current and future network demands of enterprises. It will get up to 928 Gbps bandwidth, non-blocking 48 Gbps per slot, and up to 9000W power supply through PoE ports.
With the use of the Supervisor of 8-E/8L-E comes with features like built-in wireless controller, and also extending wired features to wireless within it. Cisco 4500 series supports up to 20 Gbps wireless throughput, 50 access points, and 2000 wireless clients on single system. The Cisco 4500E delivers the detailed and the comprehensive intelligent services for automation which also includes real-time monitoring and exceptional resiliency.
There are lot of Cisco 4500 Chassis and they are
- Cisco 4503-E Chassis
- Cisco 4506-E Chassis
- Cisco 4507R+E Chassis
- Cisco 4507R-E Chassis
- Cisco 4510R+E Chassis
- Cisco 4510R-E Chassis
These all Chassis are also ready for the SDN infrastructure, Hope you remember as i earlier explain the SDN concept. If you not knew about it let me explain a short description about the SDN. SDN means the Software defined network where you actually dividing the control plane and data plane physically. Means the devices like router and switches only have the data plane and for the control plane there is one device called SDN controller from where all control plane is handled. Hope you got the clue on SDN now.
Regarding the other features in Cisco 4500 series switches, They are the subsets of Cisco 6500 catalyst switches. Similarly Cisco 6500 catalyst switches we can have the VSS features there in the Cisco 4500 Catalyst chassis as well. In Cisco 4500 catalyst chassis redundant sups in rommon mode with active uplinks are there as well same as Cisco 6500 chassis.
With the help of the VRF-Lite feature, switches like Catalyst 4500-E and 4500-X Series Switches support multiple VPN routing and forwarding (VRF) instances for network segmentation. (VRF-Lite is also referred to as multi-VRF Customer Edge). This technology does not need to use MPLS to support such instances. It relies instead on the configuration of Layer 3 interfaces on the inter-switch links.
There is another feature which this Cisco 4500 series switch is capable of and that feature is EVN. Now EVN is an enhancement of the existing VRF-Lite technology that improves Layer 3 traffic separation and path isolation on a shared network infrastructure. It simplifies Layer 3 network virtualisation without requiring MPLS end-to-end capabilities and also enhances shared services support, management, troubleshooting, and usability
It can also support Layer 2 Multichassis EtherChannel with regular EtherChannel and equal-cost multipath (ECMP) routing . For Layer 3 Multi-chassis EtherChannel ,this chassis still not supported and may be in the roadmap it can support layer 3 Multi-chassis EtherChannel as well. As far as the
Split Brain Detection mechanisms is concerns, Enhanced Port Aggregation Protocol (ePAgP), VSS fast hellos (to be added in a subsequent phase)
All these switches support 4K active VLANs and also 4K SVIs on the platform and you can have 32K multiple routes on these switches. You can have the maximum of 64 instances of the VRF-lite in these catalyst switches.
So as per the requirement of the design and the features these switches have, they are widely accepted in many of the enterprise networks these days. We will come up with the detail architecture of the Cisco 4500 series router in another post and some one ask me about the VSS concept and the split brain scenarios. we will come up with that in another article as well as it supported by Cisco 6500 Chassis and also by Cisco 6800 Chassis.
All these switches support 4K active VLANs and also 4K SVIs on the platform and you can have 32K multiple routes on these switches. You can have the maximum of 64 instances of the VRF-lite in these catalyst switches.
So as per the requirement of the design and the features these switches have, they are widely accepted in many of the enterprise networks these days. We will come up with the detail architecture of the Cisco 4500 series router in another post and some one ask me about the VSS concept and the split brain scenarios. we will come up with that in another article as well as it supported by Cisco 6500 Chassis and also by Cisco 6800 Chassis.
