Cisco Catalyst 4500 series: cable cards and their advantages

Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet line cards

The Cisco Catalyst 4500 series scalable, modular, and high-density switches provide second, third, and fourth-layer switches and intelligent services with outstanding performance, enabling network control and permanent deployment. These switches provide a variety of Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet line cards, including desktops, branch backbone and servers for enterprise and commercial exchange solutions, and the optical fiber and copper interfaces optimized by the service provider's Metro Ethernet. Gigabit Ethernet line cards include cost-effective high-performance 1000BASE-X Gigabit Interface Converter (GBIC), small pluggable (SFP) Gigabit Ethernet line cards, high-density 10/100/1000BASE-T three-speed automatic detection, and automatic negotiation of Gigabit Ethernet line cards. Fast Ethernet line cards include various line rate 10/100, 100-FX, 100BASE-LX10, and 100BASE-BX-D density.

Ethernet power cord card

The Cisco Catalyst 4500 series provides line cards, power supplies, and accessories required for deploying and operating standard Ethernet power (PoE) network interconnection. When connecting an IEEE 802.3af-compliant or Cisco pre-standard power-on device to an PoE line card, PoE is in standard 100 unshielded twisted pair wires (UTP) up to 5th meters) -48 VDC power supply is provided on the cable. IP phones, wireless base stations, cameras, and other IEEE-compliant port connection devices do not require Wall power supplies and can use power supplies from Cisco Catalyst 4500 series PoE line cards. This feature enables network administrators to centrally control power without installing sockets in ceilings and other places where power-on devices may be installed.

Although all claims such as "PoE", "feeder power", "Voice" power supplies and line cards are synonymous, there are still two versions: Cisco pre-standard and IEEE 802.3af standard. Each Cisco Catalyst 4500 series chassis and PoE power supply support the IEEE 802.3af standard, while Cisco pre-standard power supply implementation ensures backward compatibility with existing Cisco power-on devices. All line cards that comply with IEEE 802.3af standards can distinguish between IEEE or Cisco pre-standard power-on devices and non-power-on network interface cards (NICS); ensure that only power is supplied when an appropriate device is connected.

First Mile Ethernet

The Cisco Catalyst 4500 series line cards are used to provide the first mile Ethernet (EFM) to meet the high density, high bandwidth, and long distance requirements of network operators for building next-generation man networks. The Cisco Catalyst 4500 series EFM line cards enable service providers to provide a combination of data, voice, and video services for families, business areas, and multi-Tenant Units in a single optical connection. The EFM cable card is also suitable for manufacturing plants, traffic monitoring, and desktop Optical Fiber applications. Fiber Ethernet supports operations in a noisy electromagnetic environment, providing physical security and longer distances with Ethernet transmission that is equally easy to understand. The EFM line card includes 1000-BASE-X, 100-FX, 100BASE-LX10, 100BASE-BX-D for optical fiber options, and 10/100 or 10/100/1000BASE-T line cards for copper cable options when a media converter is used.

Features and advantages

Transparent Functions

The Catalyst 4500 series switches provide a series of modules that support the combination of a large number of speeds and physical media. These line cards are transparent; all group processing, sorting, buffering, and QoS are performed in the exchange management engine. To this end, the line card utilizes the features and functions of the installed switch Management Engine. This architecture enables all Ethernet line cards on the Cisco Catalyst 4500 system to easily upgrade to higher-level switching functions by adding a new switching management engine. The simple design of the Line Card enables extremely high MTBF and ensures high availability for a single connection to the end user.

Modular flexibility

The Cisco Catalyst 4500 series is a centralized architecture that provides dedicated line rate bandwidth for each line card in the chassis. Each line card has a dedicated bandwidth to the Exchange Management Engine for grouping. All network data transmitted to the Catalyst 4500 series through a variety of line cards will be processed by the Exchange Management Engine even in the communication between ports in a single slot. All line cards have a certain bandwidth per slot, allowing network administrators to design a system that provides full-dedicated server bandwidth and applications between switches, and provides high-performance, over-configuration desktop gigabit connections.

The modular centralized design allows customers to take advantage of their high-performance wire card investments that apply to the entire Catalyst 4500 chassis series and exchange management engine. For example, the initial Catalyst 4003 switch is equipped with a line card that can be installed in the new Catalyst 4500 Series Running the Cisco Catalyst 4500 Supervisor Engine V.

1. Cisco Catalyst 4500 series Supervisor Engine II-Plus
2. Cisco Catalyst 4500 series Supervisor Engine V-10ge