Cisco C9400-LC-48XS Full Product Description

1. Short Overview

Suffix Breakdown

• C9400: Catalyst 9400 modular core/aggregation switch platform
• LC: Line Card modular fiber uplink/aggregation module
• 48: Total 48 front-facing independent hot-pluggable transceiver slots
• XS: Dual-speed SFP/SFP+ interface (supports both 1G SFP and 10G SFP+; differentiates from 1G-only LC-48S, 24-port LC-24XS, 25G-capable LC-24XY and 40G/100G LC-12QC)

Core Differentiators

1. vs C9400-LC-48S: LC-48S only supports 1G SFP transceivers; LC-48XS auto-negotiates mixed 1G/10G SFP/SFP+ on all ports for higher bandwidth trunking.
2. vs C9400-LC-24XS: LC-24XS offers only 24 dual-speed ports; LC-48XS doubles port density to 48 for massive fiber aggregation scale.
3. vs 25G/40G/100G fiber line cards (LC-24XY/LC-12QC): LC-48XS caps at 10G per port, cost-optimized for campus and leaf aggregation instead of high-end data center spine core trunking.
4. vs copper PoE line cards (LC-48T/48P/48HN/48HX): Pure fiber module without PoE power, designed for long-distance high-speed trunking rather than end-user desktop access.

2. Hardware & Bandwidth Specifications

Port & Transceiver Capabilities

1. Port Count: 48 universal independent SFP/SFP+ slots, fully non-blocking full-duplex
2. Supported Auto-Negotiated Speeds per Port
   • 1000BASE-SX/LX/EX/ZX Gigabit via standard SFP transceivers
   • 10GBASE-SR/LR/ER/ZR 10 Gigabit via SFP+ transceivers
   • Cu-SFP / Cu-SFP+ copper modules for short-range 1G/10G RJ45 interconnections
3. Mixed Transceiver Compatibility: SFP and SFP+ modules can be freely mixed across all 48 ports without fixed grouping restrictions
4. Backplane Slot Bandwidth
   • With Gen1 supervisors (C9400-SUP-1 / SUP-1XL): 80 Gbps per slot bandwidth
   • With Gen2 UADP 3.0 supervisors (C9400X-SUP-2 / SUP-2XL): 240 Gbps full wire-speed non-blocking bandwidth for all 48 ports concurrently
5. Aggregate Full-Duplex Throughput: 480 Gbps bidirectional peak capacity when all ports run 10G simultaneously
6. Jumbo Frame Support: Layer 2–Layer 4 jumbo frames up to 9216 bytes for video, virtual server and large backup workloads

Built-In Hardware Acceleration Features

1. IEEE 802.1AE MACsec-256 port-level hardware encryption to secure fiber trunk transport traffic
2. IEEE 1588v2 / 802.1AS PTP hardware precision timing for broadcast video, unified voice and industrial network synchronization
3. Wire-speed L2/L3/L4 ACL filtering, QoS policing, marking, shaping, NAT and full IPv4/IPv6 routing forwarding
4. IEEE 802.3az Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE) to reduce idle port power consumption on unused transceiver slots

Physical & Power Parameters

• Form Factor: Standard full-width Catalyst 9400 line card, compatible with all empty line card slots of C9404R / C9407R / C9410R chassis
• Typical Full-Load Power Consumption: 240W
• Rated MTBF: 618,340 hours under nominal standard operating environment
• Asset Tracking: Front-mounted passive UHF RFID tag for enterprise network asset lifecycle management
• Cooling: Passive multi-heatsink design, fully reliant on chassis side-to-side shared airflow; no independent onboard fan
• No PoE Function: This module cannot supply any IEEE 802.3af/at/bt inline power to connected endpoints

Maximum Chassis Port Density (Fully Populated with LC-48XS)

Supervisor Compatibility

3. Front Panel Layout & Status LEDs

1. 48 SFP/SFP+ port slots arranged in two horizontal rows (24 ports per row)
2. Per-port bi-color link/activity LED for each transceiver slot:
   • Solid Green: Valid optical link established, normal operational status
   • Blinking Green: Bidirectional data transmission/reception
   • Solid Amber: Link down, missing transceiver, cable fault or port hardware error alarm
3. Global module status indicators at card edge:
   • STATUS LED: Green = module detected, initialized and online operational; Amber = booting/initialization/minor warning; Red = critical hardware failure or backplane communication error
   • LOCATE blue beacon LED: Remotely activated to identify the line card during rack maintenance
4. Dual mechanical ejector latches on both sides to support OIR hot insertion/removal without full chassis power shutdown

4. IOS XE Comprehensive Software Feature Set

Layer 2 Campus Switching Functions

• IEEE 802.1Q VLAN trunking (4096 maximum VLANs), PVLAN private VLAN segmentation for multi-tenant isolation
• Cross-line-card LACP/PAGP EtherChannel link aggregation for redundant high-speed fiber trunk uplinks
• RSTP/MSTP spanning tree suite with BPDU guard, root guard, loop guard and UplinkFast fast convergence
• DHCP Snooping, Dynamic ARP Inspection (DAI), IP Source Guard and MAC address port security
• IEEE 802.3az Energy Efficient Ethernet for idle port power reduction

Layer 3 & SD-Access EVPN Fabric Capabilities

• Hardware-accelerated IPv4 / IPv6 unicast & multicast routing (static routes, OSPF, EIGRP, BGP, IS-IS)
• Up to 32-way ECMP equal-cost multi-path uplink load balancing
• Native VXLAN EVPN data plane forwarding for Cisco SD-Access enterprise fabric edge aggregation
• Anycast gateway, LISP host mobility and large-scale overlay user traffic trunk aggregation
• Hardware VRF-lite multi-tenancy segmentation, supporting up to 1000 independent isolated VRF instances

Security & QoS Hardware Features

• 8 independent hardware priority queues per port, WRR/DRR congestion scheduling, traffic policing, marking and shaping
• L2/L3/L4 hardware ACL policy enforcement, CoPP control plane policing to protect supervisor CPU resources
• TrustSec SGT tag classification and end-to-end policy propagation across the entire enterprise fabric
• Encrypted Traffic Analytics (ETA) for hidden malware threat detection over encrypted fiber trunk links
• IEEE 802.1X, MAB, WebAuth wired access authentication, AAA TACACS+/RADIUS/LDAP secure authentication

Automation, Programmability & Observability

• Model-driven programmability: NETCONF, RESTCONF, YANG standardized data models, REST API
• POAP zero-touch automated provisioning for mass campus fiber fabric deployment
• Real-time streaming telemetry, IPFIX flow export, continuous port latency and buffer utilization monitoring
• GOLD non-disruptive online diagnostic tests for ongoing line card hardware health inspection
• Full native integration with Cisco DNA Center single-pane-of-glass lifecycle management, topology visualization and automated firmware orchestration

5. Typical Deployment Scenarios

1. Large Multi-Building Campus Mixed 1G/10G Fiber Aggregation
   48 high-density dual-speed SFP/SFP+ ports connect remote campus buildings via single/multimode fiber; cross-card EtherChannels deliver redundant 10G high-speed inter-building trunks to core Catalyst 9400 chassis for SD-Access EVPN overlay traffic aggregation.
2. Medium Hybrid Data Center Leaf Switch Downlink Aggregation
   Cost-effective mixed 1G/10G fiber connections to rack top switches, storage arrays and virtual server clusters; isolated VRF segmentation separates multi-department and multi-tenant cloud workloads.
3. Ultra-Dense Wi-Fi 6/6E Wireless Controller Backbone Aggregation
   10G fiber trunks aggregate thousands of multi-radio enterprise wireless APs to campus core switches; hardware QoS prioritizes low-latency voice and video real-time wireless client traffic.
4. Industrial Smart Building & Broadcast Video Fiber Backbone
   Long-distance single-mode fiber links connect distributed industrial controllers, IP surveillance subnets and broadcast media gateways; hardware MACsec encryption secures critical control and video transport, PTP timing ensures synchronized audio/video delivery, TrustSec segmentation isolates vulnerable IoT subnets from corporate user networks.
5. Service Provider Enterprise Edge Handover & Hybrid Cloud Core
   Mixed 1G/10G fiber uplinks to carrier routers and multi-cloud gateway devices; redundant EtherChannel design guarantees resilient internet breakout and cross-region enterprise connectivity for large tenant networks.

6. Standard Package Contents of C9400-LC-48XS SKU

Separately Mandatory & Optional Add-On Components

1. Mandatory Accessories
   • SFP (1G) / SFP+ (10G) optical transceivers (SX/LR/ER/ZR) or Cu-SFP/Cu-SFP+ copper modules
   • Single/multi-mode fiber patch cords, short-distance copper twinax cables
   • Catalyst 9400 series chassis, supervisors, power supplies and fan tray (sold independently)
2. Optional Accessories
   • Extended-reach long-haul single-mode SFP/SFP+ transceivers for cross-campus long-distance trunking
3. Software Licenses
   • DNA Advantage perpetual license required for full VXLAN EVPN SD-Access, advanced MACsec security, streaming telemetry and end-to-end automation feature set
   • DNA Essentials base license for fundamental Layer 2/Layer 3 switching functionality

Short Commercial Catalog Summary for Quotation