Latest

Home / Cisco / Networks / Cisco Switching: Cisco Catalyst 6840-X Fixed Chassis

Cisco Switching: Cisco Catalyst 6840-X Fixed Chassis

February 21, 2018 ,

 Today I am going to talk about the Cisco Catalyst 6840-X, a fixed chassis from Cisco. Cisco 6840-X is basically a high end chassis with the flexible deployments in the enterprise network. With the help of the Cisco 6840-X, customer can have the platform with 10/40 Gbps campus environment.

What are the different models of Cisco 6840-X Fixed Chassis Core ?
First of all, this switch is made for the core in the network topology. The Catalyst 6840-X is a 2-slot fixed chassis, based on the DNA infrastructure and design of Catalyst 6800 Series Switches.

The Switch has various below models and they are :

  • C6816-X-LE : This switch has 16x 10 Gbps ports
  • C6832-X-LE : This switch has 32x 10 Gbps ports
  • C6824-X-LE-40G : 24x10G+2x40G (daughter board only)
  • C6840-X-LE-40G : 16x10G+24x10G+2x40G (baseboard + daughter board)

The Cisco Catalyst 6840-X provides flexibility to build desired port density through four chassis versions. The four models come with a minimum of fixed 16x10G ports and up to 40x10G ports using SFP/SFP+. Two of the models come with 2x40G uplink ports with native QSFP.

Fig 1.1- Cisco Catalyst 6840-X fixed Chassis


What is the Switching capacity and Performance of all these models ?
Cisco Catalyst 6840-X Series offers premium Campus Backbone features and benefits with high switching capacity. Well below is the switching capacity of the these models

  • C6816-X-LE : Up to 80 Gbps Full Duplex
  • C6832-X-LE : Up to 160 Gbps Full Duplex
  • C6824-X-LE-40G : Up to 160 Gbps Full Duplex
  • C6840-X-LE-40G : Up to 240 Gbps Full Duplex

Well talking about the performance of these models, C6816-X will give up to 60 Mpps  the other models like C6832-X and C6824-X-LE-40G will give up to 120 Mpps and C6840-X will give up to 180 Mpps.

What are the features supported by Cisco Catalyst 6840-X models ?
Well they are supporting the various features which includes IPv4 Routing, IPv6 Routing, L2 Bridging, Jumbo Frame Support, VLAN, Bridge Domains, MPLS, Logical Interfaces, EtherChannel Hash, VPLS/GRE/NAT, Virtual Switching System (VSS), Location ID Separation Protocol (LISP), Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS), Multipoint GRE, Easy Virtual Network (EVN), VRF-aware Context, VPN-aware NAT and VPN-aware DHCP.

The Catalyst 6840-X chassis comes with two power supply unit (PSU) slots, and supports AC or DC power inputs. There is a fan tray with variable- speed fans in the back of chassis. The chassis also has built-in RFID for inventory management, Blue Beacon LED for chassis-level identification, and a bi-color LED for system status.

The chassis also includes a front-panel RJ45 console, USB type B connector for a USB console to the route processor (RP), RJ45 and SPF management ports, and a USB 2.0 host port for storage. 

This 10G/40G-ready platform is ideal for those who want to introduce premium 10G services in small or midsize campus backbones. This unique platform offers 10G port density, full IPv4/IPv6 and MPLS/VPLS functionality with large table sizes (up to 256,000 FIB entries), and more than 15 years of best-in-class features. 

With a full suite of L2/L3, virtualization, security, multicast, IPv6, application visibility, smart operations, and rich media services, the Cisco Catalyst 6840-X delivers unprecedented capabilities on day one. This platform also runs on the same architecture as the Cisco Catalyst 6500 Supervisor Engine 2T and therefore offers stability with proven operating system software.

The Cisco Catalyst 6840-X Series chassis offers integrated resiliency by providing 1+1 power supply redundancy, single removable fan-tray with four redundant fans, and support for Virtual Switching System (VSS), thereby limiting network downtime, and makes sure of workforce productivity, customer satisfaction, and profitability.