Full English Description for Cisco 7606
1. Official Short Order Description (Datasheet Standard Format)
Cisco 7606: Cisco 7600 Series Mid-Large 7RU Modular Carrier-Grade Service Edge Router, baseline non-S six-slot chassis with dual redundant Supervisor Engine slots supporting SUP2, SUP32, SUP720/SUP720XL, four horizontal OIR-capable line card slots for OSM optical transport, FlexWAN, SIP/SPA interface processors and multi-service modules, native 160 Gbps shared backplane upgradable to 256 Gbps crossbar fabric with SUP720 series supervisors, single hot-swappable fan tray with high-speed option, dual hot-swappable load-sharing AC/-48VDC/HVDC redundant power supplies, runs Cisco IOS 12.2S / 15S 64-bit service provider software stack. This EOL/EOS platform delivers MPLS L3VPN/EVPN/VPLS provider edge aggregation, SONET/ATM legacy optical WAN convergence, large-scale FTTx broadband BRAS multi-subscriber termination, hardware H-QoS, integrated IPsec/MACsec crypto acceleration and synchronized 4G/5G xHaul transport, deployed for medium/large ISP POP core, national regional 5G transport hubs, enterprise metro core and mass broadband access aggregation scenarios.
2. Complete Detailed Product Overview
Product Line Positioning
Cisco 7606 is the mid-large baseline modular chassis within the classic Cisco 7600 multi-service edge router family, positioned above the compact 5RU 7604 and below the high-density 13-slot 7609 flagship chassis, separated from the enhanced higher-throughput 7606-S variant. It adopts a 7RU rack form factor with dual supervisor slots and four line card expansion slots, supporting the full generation of 7600 supervisor engines including flagship distributed crossbar SUP720 series. Built for medium-to-large service provider central offices and hyperscale enterprise core sites, it consolidates Layer 3 IP routing, long-haul SONET/ATM optical trunk termination, DSL/cable broadband BRAS aggregation and carrier-grade security services on a unified modular platform. The chassis reached End-of-Sale and End-of-Support; Cisco no longer provides security patches, bug fixes, TAC technical support or genuine spare hardware, fully superseded by ASR 1000 and ASR 9000 modern carrier router portfolios.
Modular FRU Slot Architecture (Core Hardware Layout vs 7606-S)
Dual Hot-Swap Supervisor Engine Slots (1+1 Control Plane Redundancy)
Two rear OIR-capable supervisor bays with full backward compatibility for all mainstream 7600 supervisor generations, enabling SSO, NSF and hitless ISSU zero-downtime firmware upgrades when dual supervisors are deployed:
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SUP2 (PFC2 + MSFC2): Centralized forwarding, max 15 Mpps packet rate, 2×GE onboard uplinks
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SUP32: Integrated 8×GE or 2×10GE uplink ports, embedded crypto engine, centralized forwarding up to 30 Mpps
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SUP720 / SUP720-3BXL / SUP720XL: Integrated crossbar distributed fabric, PFC3BXL policy feature card, distributed line-rate forwarding up to 240 Mpps total system throughput, native large-scale BRAS and CGNAT hardware offload
The baseline 7606 backplane operates at 160 Gbps shared bandwidth with SUP2/SUP32; deploying SUP720 upgrades the internal crossbar fabric to 256 Gbps nonblocking full-duplex capacity.
Four Horizontal Hot-Swap Line Card Slots (OIR Supported)
All four front-facing line card slots support Online Insertion and Removal for live module replacement without chassis power cycle, fully compatible with the complete 7600 interface module ecosystem for converged high-speed fiber and legacy optical transport:
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Optical Service Modules (OSM): OC-3, OC-12, OC-48 POS/ATM SONET/SDH long-haul trunk line cards
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FlexWAN Modules: Reuse Cisco 7200-series Port Adapters for T1/E1, T3/E3 serial, Frame Relay and ISDN voice trunk access
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SPA Interface Processors (SIP-200/400): Host pluggable SPAs for dense Gigabit/10GE/40GE copper/fiber metro uplinks
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Service Acceleration Modules: NAM traffic analyzers, dedicated VPN acceleration modules, high-density broadband BRAS subscriber line cards
Each line card integrates distributed PXF packet processors to offload L2/L3 forwarding, ACL filtering, MPLS label switching and hierarchical QoS at full line rate. Unused empty slots must be covered with blank filler panels to maintain chassis airflow and EMI compliance.
Supervisor-Hosted Integrated Management I/O Subsystem
All out-of-band management interfaces reside on each individual supervisor engine:
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RJ45 RS232 Console port for local terminal CLI configuration
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RJ45 Auxiliary port for external dial-up modem remote maintenance
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Dedicated 10/100 Fast Ethernet out-of-band management port for redundant remote monitoring
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Dual PCMCIA flash card slots on SUP2/SUP32; SUP720 variants add Compact Flash storage support for large IOS image and log archives
Hot-Swap Cooling & Redundant Power Subsystem
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Single hot-swappable standard FAN-MOD-6 fan tray with side-to-side airflow; optional high-speed FAN-MOD-6HS variant extends operating temperature range to 45°C for elevated ambient central office environments, NEBS Level 3 certified
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Dual rear power supply bays supporting interchangeable wide-range AC (90–264VAC), -48VDC telecom DC or HVDC power units with 950W / 1400W / 1500W power ratings. Single supply supports standalone router operation, dual supplies enable N+1 load-sharing redundant power protection; mixed AC/DC power modules are not supported.
Processor, Memory & Storage
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Supervisor Memory Scaling By Hardware Generation
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SUP2: Base 256MB DRAM, maximum upgradable 512MB ECC DRAM; 128MB onboard boot flash
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SUP32: Base 512MB DRAM, expandable to 1GB ECC DRAM; 256MB boot flash
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SUP720-3BXL / SUP720XL: Base 1GB DRAM, field-upgradable to maximum 2GB ECC DRAM for tier-1 large BGP route reflectors and millions of concurrent BRAS subscriber sessions
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Supported Storage Media
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Onboard small boot flash for bootstrap firmware initialization
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PCMCIA Type II flash card slots available on all supervisor generations for IOS binaries, configuration archives and system logging
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Compact Flash storage support exclusive to SUP720 series supervisors for high-capacity image storage
Power, Mechanical & Environmental Specifications
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Form Factor: Standard 7RU 19-inch four-post carrier central office rack-mount chassis
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Physical Dimensions: 311.15mm H × 444.5mm W × 552.45mm D (12.25 × 17.5 × 21.75 inches)
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Full-load weight: ~43kg (94.8 lbs) with dual supervisors, four fully populated line cards and dual power supplies installed
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AC Power Input: 90–264 VAC wide range, 50/60Hz, maximum 1400W single supply output
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DC Power Input: -24V ~ -60VDC telecom standard, maximum 1500W single supply output
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Operating Temperature: 0°C ~ +40°C continuous indoor central office / data center operation; high-speed fan tray extends tolerance to 45°C
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Storage Temperature: -40°C ~ +70°C
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Humidity: 10%–90% RH non-condensing
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Compliance: UL 62368-1, IEC/EN 60950-1, NEBS GR-1089 / GR-63 Level 3, FCC Class A, CE telecom safety certification
Official Performance Benchmarks
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Baseline shared backplane bandwidth: 160 Gbps full-duplex (SUP2/SUP32 deployment)
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Crossbar fabric throughput with SUP720 series: Up to 256 Gbps nonblocking full-duplex
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Maximum distributed packet forwarding rate: Up to 240 Mpps with SUP720XL flagship supervisors
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System-wide hardware-accelerated IPsec/MACsec total crypto throughput: Max 24 Gbps
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Maximum concurrent EVPN/VPLS L2VPN service instances: Up to 10,000 with 2GB SUP memory
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Total simultaneous ATM/Frame Relay PVCs: Up to 64,000 with fully populated OSM/FlexWAN line cards
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Native hardware offload capabilities: Layer 2 switching, MPLS label switching, CBWFQ/LLQ low-latency queuing, WRED congestion avoidance, multi-layer ACL security filtering, uRPF anti-spoofing, large-scale CGNAT carrier-grade address translation
Software & Core Supported Capabilities (64-bit Modular Cisco IOS 12.2S / 15S)
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Full Multi-Protocol Routing Suite
IPv4/IPv6 dual-stack forwarding, RIP, EIGRP, OSPF, IS-IS, Segment Routing, RSVP-TE, BFD sub-second fast convergence; complete MPLS feature stack including L3VPN, EVPN, VPLS, EoMPLS, HVPLS and multi-tenant route reflector functionality for service provider PE edge deployments.
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Legacy Optical WAN Convergence Stack
Native POS/ATM SONET/SDH, Frame Relay, HDLC, PPP/MLPPP, ISDN, TDM over IP pseudowire functionality for migrating legacy circuit-switched carrier transport infrastructure.
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Broadband FTTx BRAS Aggregation Functions
DSL/cable PON subscriber termination via PPPoE/PPPoA, large-scale CGNAT, per-subscriber hierarchical QoS scheduling, RADIUS subscriber authentication, authorization and accounting.
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Unified Carrier-Grade Security Suite
Hardware-accelerated IPsec DES/3DES/AES encryption, multi-layer stateful ACL filtering, zone-based stateful firewall, AAA RADIUS/TACACS+, SSH encrypted remote management, hardware secure boot root of trust exclusive to SUP720 supervisors.
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Hierarchical H-QoS & Traffic Analytics
Class-Based Weighted Fair Queuing (CBWFQ), Low Latency Queuing (LLQ) optimized for 4G/5G xHaul voice/video transport, WRED congestion control, IP SLA performance monitoring, NetFlow v5/v9 streaming telemetry for bandwidth planning and subscriber billing statistics.
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Network Management & Automation
SNMP v1/v2c/v3, IOS CLI scripting, DHCP auto-install zero-touch deployment, TFTP configuration backup, full compatibility with CiscoWorks and NSO Network Services Orchestrator for mass device lifecycle automation.
Typical Deployment Scenarios
Medium/large independent service provider POP multi-tenant MPLS core aggregation routers, nationwide regional 4G/5G xHaul transport master hubs, medium-to-large density FTTx DSL/cable broadband BRAS concentrators, large enterprise headquarters metro WAN core convergence gateways, legacy SONET/ATM optical backbone migration edge routers, national retail SD-WAN regional master core aggregation hubs requiring four high-density line card expansion slots, dual redundant supervisor control planes and integrated carrier-grade synchronous timing synchronization.
Critical Note: This platform reached End-of-Sale and End-of-Support; Cisco no longer releases official security patches, bug fixes, TAC technical support or genuine spare hardware replacement parts. It differs from the higher-performance 7606-S enhanced chassis with upgraded backplane and expanded throughput capacity.
3. E-commerce Short Marketing Description
Cisco 7606 Mid-Large 7RU Modular Service Provider Edge Router, baseline 160 Gbps shared backplane upgradable to 256 Gbps crossbar fabric with SUP720 supervisors, dual redundant SUP2/SUP32/SUP720 series supervisor FRUs, four OIR hot-swappable line card slots supporting OSM optical, FlexWAN and SIP-SPA high-density fiber interface modules, integrated GPS/BITS synchronous timing support for 5G xHaul, dual hot-swappable AC/-48VDC/HVDC load-sharing redundant power supplies and single OIR hot-swap fan tray (high-speed optional), runs 64-bit Cisco IOS 12.2S/15S service provider software supporting MPLS EVPN, mass broadband BRAS multi-subscriber aggregation and hardware IPsec crypto acceleration, legacy EOL platform for medium/large ISP POP core, regional 5G transport master hub and large-scale metro Ethernet carrier edge deployments.
4. Product Catalog Keyword Tags
Cisco, 7606, Cisco 7600 Series, 7RU Mid-Large Modular Service Provider Edge Router, 160 Gbps Shared Backplane (Upgradable to 256 Gbps Crossbar), Full SUP2/SUP32/SUP720 Supervisor Compatibility, Four OIR Hot-Swap High-Speed Line Card Slots, Multi-Rate 1G/10G/100G Fiber / OSM POS/ATM Optical Support, NEBS Level 3 Certified, Dual Redundant AC/DC/HVDC Hot-Swap Power Supplies, Single OIR Hot-Swap Fan Tray with High-Speed Option, Up to 240 Mpps Distributed Packet Forwarding Rate, Hardware IPsec/MACsec Wire-Speed Acceleration, 64-bit Modular Cisco IOS 12.2S / 15S Software, MPLS Multi-Tenant Provider Edge Router, SONET/ATM Legacy Optical WAN Convergence, FTTx L2TP BRAS Mass Subscriber Aggregation Gateway, 4G/5G Regional xHaul Mobile Transport Hub, Medium/Large Service Provider POP Core Router, End-of-Sale / End-of-Support Legacy Carrier Platform
Naming Rule Explanation
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7600: Cisco classic modular multi-service carrier edge router series combining Layer 3 IP routing and optical SONET/ATM transport termination
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7606: Mid-large baseline 7RU six-slot chassis form factor (2 supervisor slots + four line card slots), positioned between mid-tier 7604 and flagship 7609 large chassis
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No "-S" suffix: Identifies the original baseline backplane architecture limited to 160 Gbps native throughput, distinct from the upgraded higher-capacity 7606-S variant with enhanced backplane and improved forwarding performance; fully compatible with all SUP generations including distributed crossbar SUP720 series supervisors
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