Cisco C9404R (Catalyst 9404R) Full Product Description

1. Short Overview

• Suffix breakdown definition:
  • C9400: Catalyst 9400 modular enterprise aggregation switch series
  • 4: 4 total chassis slots (2 Supervisor + 2 Line Card)
  • R: Redundant-capable chassis with side-to-side airflow, closet-friendly shallow 16-inch depth
• Core differentiators vs C9407R / C9410R: Smallest 6RU compact footprint, 2 line card slots (max 96 access ports), lower rack space occupation for medium campus aggregation pods; compared to fixed Catalyst 9300 switches, it delivers modular scalability, dual supervisor high availability, 100G uplink support and containerized application hosting on x86 supervisor CPUsCisco.

2. Chassis Slot Layout & Hardware Compatibility

Full PN Breakdown

1. C9404R: 4-slot modular aggregation switch chassis (bare chassis, supervisors, line cards, power supplies and fan tray sold separately)
   • Slot 0 & Slot 1: Dual Supervisor Engine bays (support active/standby HA deployment)
   • Slot 2 & Slot 3: Line Card bays (2 slots total, max 2 line cards populated simultaneously)
   • Rear: 4 power supply bays + single integrated hot-swappable fan tray
2. Airflow specification: Side-to-side cooling (air enters front panel, exhausts rear), all power supply and fan tray FRUs must match native side-to-side airflow design; mixed reverse airflow hardware is not supported.

Hardware Compatibility Matrix

Maximum Port Density (2 Line Card Slots Fully Populated)

• Copper RJ45 PoE++: Max 96 × Multi-Gigabit (1G/2.5G/5G/10G) UPOE+ 90W ports
• Fiber SFP+: Max 96 × 1/10G SFP+ ports
• SFP28 25G fiber: Max 48 × 25G SFP28 ports
• High-speed uplink QSFP28: Max 24 × 40G/100G QSFP28 ports
• Supervisor uplink ports (SUP-2/2XL): 4 × 10G SFP+ + 1 × 25G SFP28 + 1 × 40G QSFP uplinks per supervisor for fabric interconnectionCisco

Bare Chassis Included Hardware

1. 6RU standard 19-inch rack-mount metal chassis with integrated front cable management brackets and side mounting handles
2. Front panel status LED array: Global chassis health alarm, per-slot supervisor/line card status LEDs, power supply fault indicators, fan tray alarm LED, remote blue UID locator beacon for rack identification
3. Built-in passive UHF RFID tag for asset lifecycle management
4. Rear power supply bay cage, single fan tray slot, ground lugs and cable strain relief hardware
5. Rack mounting rails, hardware installation guide, regulatory compliance documentation
6. Items Not Included (Mandatory Separate Order)
   • 1 or 2 supervisor engine modules (dual supervisors recommended for HA)
   • 1–2 line card modules based on port density requirements
   • 1–4 hot-swappable AC/DC power supplies (PoE deployments require high-wattage PoE PSUs)
   • Dedicated side-to-side hot-swappable fan tray assembly
   • SFP/SFP+/SFP28/QSFP28 transceivers, DAC/AOC fiber cables, console rollover cable

3. Port & Slot Layout Description

Front Panel Slots & Interfaces

1. Dual Supervisor Slots (Slot 0 / Slot 1): Each supervisor provides out-of-band management ports, console port, USB storage, timing clock and built-in uplink transceivers slots:
   • RJ45 RS232 serial console port for local CLI configuration
   • 1 × 10/100/1000BASE-T out-of-band MGMT Ethernet port
   • USB Type-A storage port for firmware/image backup, POAP provisioning files
   • Front-panel uplink optical ports (10G/25G/40G SFP+/SFP28/QSFP)
   • Internal SSD storage for container application hosting (up to 960GB on SUP-2XL)
2. Dual Line Card Slots (Slot 2 / Slot 3): Hot-swappable line card bays supporting mixed copper PoE and fiber uplink modules, each line card equipped with per-port link/activity LEDs
3. Chassis Status Indicators:
   • Global system LED: Green = normal operation, Amber = minor fault, Red = critical hardware failure
   • Per-slot module status LEDs for supervisors and line cards
   • Dedicated fault LEDs for power supply and fan tray assemblies
   • Remote-triggerable blue UID beacon LED for rack asset location during maintenance

Rear Panel Hardware Layout

1. Four hot-swappable power supply slots supporting redundant AC/DC power deployment
2. Single integrated hot-swappable fan tray assembly for side-to-side chassis cooling
3. Chassis earth grounding terminals, cable retention brackets and exhaust air vents

4. Hardware Performance Specifications

1. Switching Fabric Capacity (UADP 3.0 SUP-2XL): Up to 48 Tbps non-blocking full-duplex switching throughput
2. Forwarding Rate: Up to 18 Bpps 64-byte packet forwarding capacity
3. MAC Address Table Scale: Up to 1 million MAC entries
4. IPv4/IPv6 Routing Table: Up to 2 million IPv4 LPM routes, 1 million IPv6 LPM routes
5. ACL Resource Scale: Up to 128,000 Layer 2 / Layer 3 ACL entries (programmable UADP ASIC dynamic resource allocation)
6. QoS Capabilities: 8 hardware priority queues per port, WRR/DRR scheduling, traffic policing, marking, shaping and congestion avoidance
7. PoE Power Budget: Max 2880W per chassis with four high-wattage PoE power supplies, supporting full 90W UPOE++ power delivery per RJ45 port, IEEE 802.3af/at/bt compliant
8. High Availability Features:
   • Dual active/standby supervisor with NSF/SSO stateful failover
   • ISSU In-Service Software Upgrade for zero traffic downtime firmware updates
   • Hot-swappable supervisors, line cards, power supplies and fan trays
   • StackWise Virtual chassis virtualization for multi-chassis logical single fabric node
   • N+1 / N+N redundant power supply architecture

Physical & Environmental Parameters

• Form Factor: 6 RU rack unit (10.47 in / 26.53 cm height)
• Dimensions (H × W × D): 10.47 × 17.30 × 16.30 in (26.53 × 43.94 × 41.40 cm)
• Bare chassis weight (only frame, no modules/fans/PSUs): 39.0 lb (17.2 kg)
• Operating temperature: -5°C to +45°C (23°F to 113°F) at altitude ≤1800m; -5°C to +40°C at altitude ≤3000m
• Storage temperature: -40°C to +75°C (-40°F to 167°F)
• Operating humidity: 10%–85% non-condensing
• Acoustic noise: ≤57 dBA under normal 50% PSU load
• Vibration & Shock Compliance: Operating 5G half-sine shock, storage 15G shock; industrial vibration tolerance
• Regulatory Certifications: UL 60950-1, CE Class A EMC, FCC Part 15, NEBS Level 3, RoHS 6 compliant, seismic GR63 certified

Power Supply FRU Specifications (Separate Purchase)

• AC Input Range: 100–240V 50/60Hz high-efficiency 80 Plus platinum power supplies
• PoE PSU Models: 1100W non-PoE, 2880W full UPOE++ capable AC power supply
• DC Telecom PSU: -40V to -72V negative DC power supply variant
• All PSUs support hot OIR replacement without chassis reboot
• Rated MTBF: 2,077,070 hours under nominal operating conditions

5. IOS XE Software Feature Set

Core Layer 2 Campus Switching Features

• IEEE 802.1Q VLAN trunking (4096 VLANs maximum), PVLAN private VLAN segmentation
• RSTP/MSTP spanning tree suite with BPDU guard, root guard, loop guard
• LACP/PAGP EtherChannel link aggregation, cross-line-card port channel support
• DHCP Snooping, Dynamic ARP Inspection (DAI), IP Source Guard, port security
• IEEE 802.3az Energy Efficient Ethernet, cable diagnostics, UPOE power management with priority power shutdown for IoT/AP devices

Layer 3 Routing & SD-Access Fabric Features

• Native IPv4 / IPv6 unicast/multicast routing: Static routes, OSPF, EIGRP, BGP, IS-IS
• 32-way ECMP equal-cost multi-path load balancing
• VXLAN EVPN data plane for Cisco SD-Access enterprise fabric architecture
• Anycast gateway, LISP host mobility, fabric border node capability
• Hardware VRF-lite multi-tenancy segmentation, up to 1000 VRF instances

Security & Zero Trust Features

• Cisco DNA Security integration, Encrypted Traffic Analytics (ETA)
• IEEE 802.1X MAC authentication, WebAuth, MAB multi-factor access control
• Hardware ACL policy enforcement, CoPP control plane policing
• TrustSec SGT tag classification and end-to-end policy propagation
• Secure boot, image signing, encrypted configuration storage, AAA TACACS+/RADIUS/LDAP

Automation, Programmability & Observability

• Model-driven programmability: NETCONF, RESTCONF, NX-API, YANG data models
• Embedded x86 supervisor CPU supporting container hosting (Docker third-party applications)
• POAP zero-touch automated provisioning for fabric deployment
• Streaming telemetry, real-time buffer/latency counters, IPFIX flow export
• Cisco DNA Center single-pane management, full lifecycle automation, firmware orchestration
• GOLD online diagnostic tests for non-disruptive hardware health monitoring

6. Typical Deployment Scenarios for C9404R Chassis

1. Medium Enterprise Campus Aggregation Layer: Compact 6RU footprint fits standard wiring closets, dual line card slots support mixed PoE multi-gigabit access and 100G uplinks to core switches; dual supervisors deliver full HA for mission-critical user traffic, SD-Access EVPN fabric border node deployment.
2. Mid-Size Wireless Controller Aggregation: High-capacity UPOE++ power budget powers hundreds of Wi-Fi 6/6E access points, PoE priority management ensures uninterrupted AP operation during power budget constraints, 25G/100G uplinks support high wireless throughput concurrency.
3. Hybrid Cloud & Data Center Leaf Aggregation: Flexible fiber line card options provide 10G/25G/100G uplinks to data center spine switches, VXLAN EVPN multi-tenancy isolates enterprise, IoT and cloud workloads on shared physical infrastructure.
4. Smart Building / IoT Convergence Switch: Mass PoE capacity powers IP cameras, door access controllers, lighting sensors and industrial IoT endpoints, hardware QoS prioritizes low-latency industrial control traffic, TrustSec segmentation isolates IoT devices from corporate user networks.
5. Disaster Recovery & Branch Core: StackWise Virtual virtualizes two C9404R chassis into a single logical switch for redundant branch core architecture, ISSU firmware upgrades eliminate maintenance windows for 24/7 business environments.

7. Standard Package Contents of C9404R Bare Chassis SKU

Separately Mandatory & Optional Components

1. Mandatory FRUs to complete functional switch:
   • 1× or 2× Supervisor Engine (dual SUP recommended for HA)
   • 1–2× Line Card modules (based on port density requirements)
   • 1× dedicated C9404R side-to-side fan tray assembly
   • Minimum 1× AC/DC power supply (N+1 redundant deployment recommended)
2. Optional Accessories:
   • SFP/SFP+/SFP28/QSFP28 optical transceivers, passive Twinax DAC, active AOC fiber cables
   • RJ45 console rollover cable, out-of-band management patch cords, lockable front door, cable management guides
3. Software Licenses:
   • DNA Advantage perpetual license for full SD-Access, security, telemetry and automation feature set
   • DNA Essentials base license for basic Layer 2/3 switching functionality

Short Commercial Catalog Summary for Quotation