Cisco Catalyst WS-C6504 Full English Product Description

1. Short Sales Title

2. Official Product Overview

Key Hardware Distinctions vs WS-C6504-E Enhanced Variant

1. Passive shared bus backplane capped at total 32 Gbps system bandwidth; no dedicated 80 Gbps per-slot fabric of E-series chassis.
2. Limited power supply compatibility: only 950W AC/DC PSUs supported; cannot run high-wattage 2700W/3000W power supplies required for full-density high-power PoE and multi-10G line cards.
3. No built-in high-speed fabric hardware; Supervisor Engine 2T is completely unsupported, only conditional limited compatibility with Sup32 and Sup720 (requires high-speed fan tray upgrade FAN-MOD-4HS).
4. Four horizontal slots with flexible dual supervisor deployment: Slots 1 and 2 accept supervisors for 1+1 HA redundancy, while Slots 3 and 4 are fixed exclusively for Ethernet or service modules, delivering higher port density than the smaller 3-slot WS-C6503 chassis.

Core High-Availability Design

Model Suffix Breakdown

• WS-C: Cisco Catalyst LAN Switch Platform Identifier
• 6504: Catalyst 6500 modular series, total 4 horizontal slot classic non-enhanced chassis
• No suffix: Original non-E passive shared bus chassis, limited power and high-performance supervisor compatibility

Chassis Slot Layout Definition (Horizontal Slots 1–4, Top to Bottom)

1. Slot 1: Multi-purpose primary slot – Primary Supervisor Engine or line card/service module
2. Slot 2: Multi-purpose secondary slot – Secondary redundant Supervisor Engine (1+1 HA pair) or second line card/service module
3. Slot 3: Fixed dedicated line card slot for Ethernet, PoE, FlexWAN, FWSM, VPN SPA modules
4. Slot 4: Fixed dedicated line card slot for Ethernet, PoE, FlexWAN, FWSM, VPN SPA modules
5. Rear Compartment: Two independent hot-swappable power supply bays supporting 1+1 N+1 power redundancy, limited to dual 950W AC/DC PSUs
6. Front lower bay: Single integrated hot-swappable variable-speed fan tray; high-speed fan tray upgrade required for Sup32/Sup720 operation

Supported Supervisor Engines (Restricted Compatibility)

1. Fully supported legacy supervisors: Supervisor Engine 1A (WS-X6K-S1A-MSFC2), Supervisor Engine 2 (WS-X6K-S2-PFC2 / WS-X6K-S2U-MSFC2) with MSFC2 multilayer routing and PFC2 policy feature card
2. Conditional limited support: Supervisor Engine 32, Supervisor Engine 720/720-10GE (mandatory FAN-MOD-4HS high-speed fan tray, minimum IOS 12.2SX software release)
3. Unsupported hardware: Supervisor Engine 2T (S2T), WS-C6500-SFM fabric modules, all E-series exclusive high-power line cards
4. Redundancy rule: Dual standby supervisors must be identical model with matching MSFC/PFC daughter cards to enable SSO/NSF failover

Supported Line Card & Integrated Service Modules

1. Gigabit copper access modules: 24/48-port 10/100/1000BASE-T, IEEE 802.3af PoE-capable line cards
2. Fiber uplink modules: GBIC-based Gigabit Ethernet, X2 10GE uplink line cards
3. Integrated service modules: FWSM Firewall Services Module, ACE Application Control Engine, FlexWAN WAN aggregation (T1/E1/OC-3/OC-48 POS), IPsec VPN SPA modules
4. Limitation: High-power ePoE and dense multi-10G E-series line cards cannot be deployed due to backplane and power constraints

3. Hardware & Physical Specifications

Core Switching & Routing Performance

• Total passive shared bus backplane capacity: Max 32 Gbps full-duplex system-wide bandwidth
• Wire-speed forwarding rate: Up to 30 Mpps Layer 2 bridging / IPv4 CEF hardware routing (restricted by shared bus architecture)
• Dynamic shared packet buffer pool, size determined by installed supervisor generation
• MAC address table capacity: 32,768 MAC entries (PFC2) / 131,072 MAC entries (PFC3BXL on Sup720)
• IPv4 routing table scale: 64,000 CEF routes (Sup2) / 256,000 CEF routes (Sup720); Sup2 only supports software-only IPv6 forwarding, Sup720 delivers hardware IPv6 acceleration
• TCAM ACL/QoS/security flow entries: 64,000 (PFC2) / 128,000 (PFC3BXL)
• Maximum VLANs: 4094 standard 802.1Q tagged VLANs, ISL proprietary trunk encapsulation fully supported
• SVI routed inter-VLAN interfaces: Up to 4094 SVIs
• Jumbo frame MTU support: Up to 9198 bytes across all copper/fiber ports
• Link aggregation: Gigabit EtherChannel (GEC), 10GE EtherChannel, maximum 8 ports per logical bundle

Power & Cooling System

• Power supply bays: 2 hot-swappable redundant slots, exclusive compatibility with 950W AC-input or DC-input PSUs; higher wattage 1400W/2700W PSUs are physically incompatible
• AC input voltage range: 100–240V 50/60Hz; optional –48V DC telecom negative power PSU
• Fan tray: Standard single integrated multi-fan hot-swappable assembly; upgrade to FAN-MOD-4HS high-speed fan tray mandatory for Sup32/Sup720 supervisors
• Airflow path: Fixed front-to-back cold air intake at port panel, hot exhaust from rear power supply compartment
• Real-time hardware monitoring: Fan speed, internal temperature, PSU voltage and module fault alerts via front panel LEDs, console syslog and SNMP traps

Physical & Environmental Parameters

• Rack form factor: 5 RU standard 19-inch horizontal rack mount
• Dimensions (H × W × D): 22.23 cm × 43.97 cm × 40.64 cm (8.75 × 17.31 × 16 inches)
• Bare chassis weight: 13.6 kg (30 lbs) without power supplies; maximum fully loaded weight 27.2 kg (60 lbs) with dual PSUs, dual supervisors and all four slots populated
• Operating temperature range: 0°C to 40°C (32°F–104°F); certified altitude up to 3000 meters
• Storage temperature range: -40°C to 75°C (-40°F–167°F)
• Relative humidity: 10%–90% non-condensing for operation, 5%–95% non-condensing for storage
• Compliance Certifications: FCC Class A, UL 60950, CE, VCCI Class A, NEBS Level 3, RoHS compliant

Supervisor Out-of-Band Management Interfaces (Dual Supervisors Identical Ports)

• RJ45 RS232 serial console port for local CLI access
• PCMCIA flash card slot for IOS image storage and configuration backup
• Isolated dedicated 10/100BASE-T out-of-band Ethernet management port
• Dual uplink slots (GBIC/SFP/X2 for 1G/10GE transceivers based on supervisor model)
• Front panel diagnostic LED bank: System status, power, fan, module, port link/activity, fault, UID beacon indicators

4. Full Layer 2 & Layer 3 IOS Feature Set (Cisco IOS 12.1E / 12.2SX)

Layer 2 Switching Features

• IEEE 802.1D STP, 802.1w Rapid STP, 802.1s MSTP multi-instance spanning tree
• 802.1Q trunking + ISL proprietary trunk encapsulation, DTP dynamic trunk negotiation
• VTP v1/v2/v3 VLAN Trunking Protocol, Private VLAN host isolation, Q-in-Q VLAN stacking for multi-tenant segmentation
• Port security, static/dynamic secure MAC address learning, MAC address filtering
• 802.3ad LACP standard EtherChannel link aggregation
• Broadcast/multicast/unicast storm suppression per physical port
• IGMPv1/v2/v3 snooping, CGMP for IPTV and video multicast traffic optimization
• Voice VLAN auto-detection for Cisco IP phone uplink aggregation
• Local SPAN, RSPAN remote traffic mirroring for network monitoring
• 802.3x full-duplex flow control for congestion management

Layer 3 Routing & Multicast Features (IP Base / IP Services License)

• Static IPv4 routing, RIP v1/v2, multi-area OSPFv2, EIGRP, BGPv4 inter-domain routing protocols
• Wire-speed hardware CEF SVI inter-VLAN routing (IPv4 only hardware accelerated on Sup2; Sup720 adds native hardware IPv6 forwarding)
• PIM-DM / PIM-SM / PIM-SSM IP multicast routing, MSDP inter-domain multicast support
• ECMP equal-cost multi-path load balancing across multiple 1G/10GE uplink trunks
• Policy-Based Routing (PBR) enabled with IP Services IOS license
• Multi-VRF Lite multi-tenant network segmentation (Sup32/Sup720 only)
• VSS Virtual Switching System multi-chassis virtualization support limited exclusively to Sup720 generation supervisors

Advanced MQC QoS & Traffic Prioritization

• Hierarchical Modular QoS Command-Line (MQC) policy framework for granular traffic control
• 8 hardware egress priority queues per physical port, bidirectional 802.1p CoS / IP DSCP mapping and re-marking
• Ingress traffic policing, egress bandwidth shaping, packet marking and reclassification
• Pre-built Auto-QoS optimized templates for VoIP telephony, video conferencing and IP surveillance streams
• Dedicated expedite voice priority queue for low-latency IP phone traffic

Enterprise Security Suite

• IEEE 802.1X port-based NAC authentication with RADIUS/TACACS+ AAA identity management
• DHCP Snooping, Dynamic ARP Inspection (DAI), IP Source Guard, uRPF anti-spoofing protection
• Hardware-accelerated Port ACL, VLAN ACL (VACL), Route ACL traffic filtering
• SSHv2 encrypted CLI remote management, SNMPv3 secure monitoring, encrypted startup configuration files
• Control Plane Policing (CoPP) to protect supervisor control CPU from DDoS flood attacks
• Cisco TrustSec security group tagging (Sup720 only)
• Native support for FWSM integrated inline firewall service modules

Monitoring & Management Tools

• NetFlow v9 traffic export; limited Flexible NetFlow functionality only available on Sup720 supervisors
• Isolated out-of-band Ethernet management port for offline device access during production outages
• PCMCIA flash storage for offline IOS image upgrades and configuration backup archives
• Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP) for automatic neighbor device discovery
• Cisco EnergyWise power efficiency monitoring to reduce idle PoE port power consumption

5. High Availability Capabilities (Core Differentiators vs Smaller WS-C6503)

1. Dual hot-swappable redundant 950W AC/DC power supplies delivering 1+1 power failover protection
2. Full OIR Online Insertion and Removal support for fan tray, power supplies, supervisors and all line/service modules; live FRU replacement without chassis power shutdown
3. Dual redundant supervisor deployment (Slots1+2 identical matching Sup engines): SSO Stateful Switchover, NSF Nonstop Forwarding, ISSU In-Service Software Upgrade for zero-downtime core firmware maintenance
4. Single variable-speed hot-swappable fan tray with individual fan fault detection and real-time SNMP fault alerting
5. Two dedicated fixed line card slots (vs one slot on WS-C6503) for doubled port density and flexible mixing of PoE access, fiber uplink and security/WAN service modules
6. Limitation: Passive shared bus backplane creates single fabric failure point; independent SFM switching fabric modules are unsupported on this classic non-E chassis

6. Typical Deployment Scenarios

1. Mid-Size Enterprise Multi-Building Campus Core Switch

   Compact 5RU horizontal rack form factor balances space efficiency and port density; dual redundant supervisors eliminate single point of failure for multi-building campus backbone, aggregating dozens of building distribution switches via Gigabit/10GE fiber trunks and supporting campus-wide IPTV unified communications.
2. High-Density Multi-Floor Building Distribution Aggregation

   Four-slot design supports mixed high-density PoE copper access line cards and fiber uplink modules, consolidating thousands of IP phones, workstations and surveillance cameras for entire multi-story office towers without large 6/9-slot chassis footprint.
3. Large Regional Mission-Critical Branch Office Core Switch

   Financial, healthcare and government remote branch networks require full supervisor + power redundancy to avoid costly site-wide outages; integrates FlexWAN T1/E1 WAN aggregation, FWSM inline firewall and high-density PoE Wi-Fi AP power delivery in a single compact chassis.
4. Medium SMB Data Center Aggregation Switch

   Gigabit and 10GE fiber uplink line cards connect server racks, storage arrays and virtualization hosts; wire-speed Layer 3 CEF forwarding enables scalable leaf-spine data center architectures with redundant supervisor failover for business-critical server workloads.
5. Legacy Catalyst 6000 Series Hardware Upgrade

   Drop-in performance upgrade for aging WS-C6004 chassis, fully backward compatible with legacy Sup2 supervisors and existing GBIC/SFP optical transceivers to extend legacy network hardware lifecycle with increased total backplane bandwidth and extra line card slot capacity.

7. Standard Package Contents

Items Sold Separately (Not Included)

• Supervisor Engine (1A / 2 / 32 / 720 variants; minimum two identical units required for full HA redundancy)
• Dual 950W AC or DC hot-swappable redundant power supply units (higher wattage PSUs incompatible)
• Classic 6500 series copper/fiber PoE line cards, FWSM, FlexWAN, ACE, VPN SPA service modules
• GBIC / SFP / X2 optical transceivers for supervisor uplink ports
• Optional FAN-MOD-4HS high-speed fan tray for Sup32/Sup720 operation
• RS232 serial console rollover cable, PCMCIA flash memory cards, fiber patch cords and cable management accessories

Short Commercial Catalog Version (For Quotation & Datasheet Use)