Cisco Catalyst WS-C6509-E Full English Product Description

1. Short Sales Title

2. Official Product Overview

Core Hardware Improvements vs Classic WS-C6509 Non-E Chassis

1. Independent per-slot 80 Gbps switching fabric architecture (720 Gbps total fabric capacity) vs limited 256 Gbps shared passive bus on non-E models, eliminating single shared bus congestion bottlenecksCisco.
2. Heavy-duty power delivery supporting high-wattage 2500W/3000W/4000W/6000W AC/DC power supplies, fully compatible with high-power ePoE and dense multi-10G E-series line cardsCisco.
3. Universal supervisor compatibility: Native support for Supervisor 32, Supervisor 720, and high-end Supervisor 2T (S2T) – the non-E WS-C6509 completely blocks Supervisor 2T deployment.
4. Optimized thermal design with high-capacity redundant hot-swap fan trays to sustain full-load high-power line card operation without mandatory fan upgrades for high-end supervisors.
5. Standard front-to-back airflow (WS-C6509-E-F is reversed back-to-front airflow variant for hot-aisle data center racks; fan trays and PSUs are non-interchangeable between airflow variants).
6. Built-in SFM Switch Fabric Module slots for independent fabric redundancy, removing the single shared bus failure point of classic 6500 non-E chassis.

Slot HA Architecture

Model Suffix Breakdown

• WS-C: Cisco Catalyst LAN Switch Platform Identifier
• 6509: Catalyst 6500 modular series, total 9 horizontal slots
• E: Enhanced high-speed fabric chassis, independent per-slot 80 Gbps bandwidth, high-wattage power rail, full Sup2T supervisor compatibility, upgraded thermal design
  No extra F suffix: Front-to-back cold aisle airflow (burgundy color-coded PSUs/fans; WS-C6509-E-F = back-to-front hot aisle blue airflow variant)

Chassis Slot Layout Definition (Horizontal Slots 1–9, Top to Bottom)

1. Slot 1: General-purpose hot-swappable line card slot (Ethernet PoE, fiber uplink, service modules)
2. Slot 2: General-purpose hot-swappable line card slot
3. Slot 3: General-purpose hot-swappable line card slot
4. Slot 4: General-purpose hot-swappable line card slot
5. Slot 5: General-purpose hot-swappable line card slot
6. Slot 6: General-purpose hot-swappable line card slot
7. Slot 7: General-purpose hot-swappable line card slot
8. Slot 8: Dedicated primary supervisor engine slot (Sup32 / Sup720 / Sup2T)
9. Slot 9: Dedicated secondary redundant supervisor engine slot (matching identical supervisor for 1+1 HA redundancy)
10. Rear Compartment: Dual independent hot-swappable power supply bays supporting 1+1 N+1 power failover, compatible with high-wattage AC/DC PSUs
11. Front lower bay: Integrated redundant variable-speed hot-swappable fan tray (WS-C6509-E-FAN)

Supported Supervisor Engines (Full Native Compatibility)

1. Supervisor Engine 32 (WS-SUP32-10GE, WS-SUP32-GE)
2. Supervisor Engine 720 / 720-10GE (PFC3B / PFC3BXL)
3. High-end Supervisor Engine 2T (VS-S2T-10G / VS-S2T-10G-XL) – exclusive E-series chassis support, unsupported on all non-E 6509 chassis
   Redundancy rule: Dual standby supervisors must use identical model with matching PFC/DFC daughter cards to enable SSO/NSF failover.

Supported Line Card & Integrated Service Modules

1. Gigabit copper access: 24/48-port 10/100/1000BASE-T, IEEE 802.3af PoE, high-power ePoE E-series line cards
2. Fiber uplink modules: GBIC/SFP Gigabit, X2/SFP+ 10GE high-density line cards (WS-X6708-10G, WS-X6908-10G-2TXL for Sup2T)
3. Multiservice integrated modules: FWSM Firewall Services Module, ACE Application Control Engine load balancer, FlexWAN WAN aggregation (T1/E1/OC-3/OC-48 POS), IPsec VPN SPA, WiSM Wireless Services Module, NAM Network Analysis Module
4. Switch Fabric Modules: WS-C6500-SFM / SFM2 independent fabric redundancy modules to eliminate single fabric failure points

3. Hardware & Physical Specifications

Core Switching & Routing Performance

• Independent per-slot fabric bandwidth: 80 Gbps full-duplex per line card/supervisor slot
• Total system non-blocking fabric capacity: Max 720 Gbps full-duplex
• Wire-speed forwarding rate: Up to 387 Mpps Layer 2 bridging / IPv4 CEF hardware routing; Sup2T delivers full hardware IPv6 forwarding at matching line rate抖音百科
• Dynamic shared packet buffer pool, expanded memory and TCAM on Sup720/Sup2T supervisors
• MAC address table capacity: 131,072 MAC entries (PFC3BXL / S2T-XL)
• Routing table scale: IPv4 256,000 CEF routes; IPv6 128,000 hardware forwarding routes
• TCAM ACL/QoS/security flow entries: 128,000 concurrent Flexible NetFlow records
• Maximum VLANs: 4094 standard 802.1Q tagged VLANs, ISL trunking fully supported
• SVI routed inter-VLAN interfaces: Up to 4094 SVIs
• Jumbo frame MTU support: Up to 9216 bytes for bridged and routed traffic
• Link aggregation: Gigabit EtherChannel (GEC), 10GE EtherChannel, maximum 8 ports per logical bundle

Power & Cooling System

• Power supply bays: 2 hot-swappable redundant slots enabling 1+1 N+1 power failover
• Supported AC PSUs: 2500W, 3000W, 4000W, 6000W, 8700W hot-swap AC-input power supplies
• Supported DC PSUs: 2500W, 4000W, 6000W telecom negative –48V DC power suppliesCisco
• Fan tray: Integrated multi-fan variable-speed hot-swappable redundant assembly with per-fan fault detection; single fan failure triggers SNMP alert without traffic loss
• Airflow direction: Front-to-back cold air intake at port panel, hot exhaust from rear power supply compartment (WS-C6509-E-F reversed back-to-front)
• Real-time monitoring: Fan speed, internal temperature, PSU voltage and module fault alerts via front panel LEDs, console syslog and SNMP traps; major thermal alarm at 55°CCisco

Physical & Environmental Parameters

• Rack form factor: 14 RU standard 19-inch horizontal rack mount
• Dimensions (H × W × D): 62.23 cm × 44.5 cm × 46.0 cm (24.5 × 17.5 × 18.2 inches)Cisco
• Bare chassis weight: 27.3 kg (60 lbs) without power supplies/fan tray; fully loaded max weight 86.2 kg (190 lbs) with dual PSUs, dual supervisors and all seven line card slots populatedCisco
• Operating temperature range: 0°C to 40°C (32°F–104°F); certified altitude up to 2000 meters
• Storage temperature range: -20°C to 65°C (-4°F–149°F)
• Relative humidity: 5%–90% non-condensing operating; 5%–95% non-condensing storage
• Compliance Certifications: FCC Class A, UL 60950-1, CE, VCCI Class A, NEBS Level 3, RoHS compliant, FIPS 140-2 Level 2 validated
• MTBF: 348,935 hours under standard operating conditionsCisco

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 archives
• Isolated dedicated 10/100BASE-T out-of-band Ethernet management port
• Dual uplink slots (GBIC/SFP/X2/SFP+ for 1G/10GE transceivers based on supervisor model)
• Front panel diagnostic LED bank: System status, power (PS1/PS2), fan, module, port link/activity, fault, UID beacon indicators

4. Full Layer 2 & Layer 3 IOS Feature Set (Cisco IOS 12.2SX / IOS 15SX)

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 service provider 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 VoIP and IPTV multicast traffic optimization
• Voice VLAN auto-detection for Cisco IP phone uplink aggregation
• Local SPAN, RSPAN, ESPAN enhanced remote traffic mirroring for multi-session 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/BGPv6 inter-domain routing protocols
• Wire-speed hardware CEF SVI inter-VLAN routing (IPv4 full hardware on all supervisors; Sup2T delivers full line-rate hardware IPv6)
• 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
• VSS Virtual Switching System: Pair two WS-C6509-E chassis into a single logical redundant switch supporting SSO Stateful Switchover, NSF Nonstop Forwarding and ISSU In-Service Software Upgrade for zero-downtime core firmware maintenance

Advanced MQC QoS & Traffic Prioritization

• Hierarchical Modular QoS Command-Line (MQC) policy framework for granular end-to-end 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, 4K 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
• IEEE 802.1AE MACsec link encryption on all 10GE uplink ports
• 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 for end-to-end policy segmentation
• Native support for FWSM integrated inline firewall service modules for perimeter security

Monitoring & Management Tools

• Flexible NetFlow v9 full wire-speed flow export for deep application visibility and traffic analytics
• 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
• Smart Install zero-touch automated mass switch provisioning

5. High Availability Capabilities (Core Differentiators vs Classic WS-C6509 Non-E)

1. Dual hot-swappable high-wattage AC/DC redundant power supplies (1+1 power failover protection, supports full ePoE line card loads)
2. Redundant variable-speed hot-swappable fan tray with individual fan fault detection and real-time SNMP fault alerting
3. 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
4. Dual dedicated supervisor slots for 1+1 HA redundancy: SSO Stateful Switchover, NSF Nonstop Forwarding, ISSU In-Service Software Upgrade for zero-downtime core firmware maintenance
5. Independent SFM switching fabric modules eliminate single shared bus failure point of non-E chassis
6. VSS multi-chassis virtual switching with sub-second convergence for mission-critical core network resiliency
7. Seven dedicated general line card slots for maximum flexible mixing of PoE copper access, 10G fiber uplink and security/WAN/Wireless service modules
8. Upgraded thermal and power rails to support full-density high-power ePoE and dense 10G line cards unsupported on legacy WS-C6509 chassis

6. Typical Deployment Scenarios

1. Large Enterprise Multi-Building Campus Core Switch
   Flagship 14RU horizontal rack form factor delivers maximum expandability and fabric performance; dual redundant supervisors eliminate single point of failure for enterprise-wide multi-building campus backbone, aggregating dozens of building distribution switches via 10GE fiber trunks and supporting VSS virtual core pooling, campus-wide IPTV unified communications, wireless mobility domains and centralized 4K surveillance for thousands of end-users.
2. Ultra-High-Density Multi-Floor Office / Hospital Distribution Aggregation
   Nine-slot design supports mixed full-density ePoE copper access and 10G fiber uplink line cards, consolidating thousands of IP phones, workstations and medical surveillance cameras for entire multi-story facilities without deploying multiple smaller 6-slot chassis.
3. Large Regional Mission-Critical Headquarters Core Switch
   Financial, healthcare and government headquarters require complete supervisor + power + fabric redundancy to avoid site-wide catastrophic outages; integrates FlexWAN T1/E1 WAN aggregation, FWSM inline firewall, WiSM wireless controller and high-density PoE Wi-Fi AP power delivery in a single unified chassis.
4. Medium-to-Large Enterprise Data Center Aggregation / Spine Switch
   High-speed independent 80 Gbps per-slot fabric delivers low-latency east-west server traffic; 10G SFP+ line cards connect hundreds of server racks, storage arrays and virtualization hosts, enabling scalable leaf-spine data center architectures with redundant supervisor failover for business-critical database and virtualization workloads.
5. Legacy Catalyst 6500 Non-E Hardware Upgrade
   Drop-in performance upgrade for aging WS-C6509 classic shared-bus chassis; backward compatible with legacy SFP/GBIC transceivers and standard PoE line cards while unlocking independent fabric bandwidth, Sup2T high-performance supervisor support, high-power ePoE capability and VSS multi-switch virtualization.

7. Standard Package Contents

Items Sold Separately (Not Included)

• High-wattage AC or DC hot-swappable redundant power supply units (E-series airflow-specific PSUs non-interchangeable with WS-C6509-E-F)
• WS-C6509-E-FAN integrated hot-swappable fan tray
• Supervisor Engine (32 / 720 / 2T variants; minimum two identical units required for full HA redundancy)
• SFM Switch Fabric Modules for fabric redundancy
• E-series copper/fiber PoE/ePoE line cards, FWSM, FlexWAN, ACE, VPN SPA, WiSM, NAM service modules
• GBIC / SFP / X2 / SFP+ optical transceivers for supervisor and line card uplink ports
• RS232 serial console rollover cable, PCMCIA flash memory cards, fiber patch cords and cable management accessories

Short Commercial Catalog Version (For Quotation & Datasheet Use)