Cisco announces a 16-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet module for the Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series. The 16-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet module doubles the 10 Gigabit Ethernet density on the Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series, providing up to 130 ports of 10 Gigabit Ethernet in a single Cisco Catalyst 6500 chassis. It is ideal for deployment in the LAN campus aggregation or data center access, where fanout and port density are important. The 16-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet module complements the existing integrated services on the Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series, enabling customers to build a scalable, resilient, and manageable data center to meet their growing business needs to consolidate and virtualize servers and storage to maximize resource utilization and reduce capital expenses.

Both modules contain the WS-X6716-10GE base board and a distributed forwarding card. The base module supports up to 16 pluggable X2 optics and has a 40-Gbps connection to the fabric and is therefore 4:1 oversubscribed. The distributed forwarding card provides hardware-based multicast replication, NetFlow, and MAC learning and forwards traffic at 48 Mpps. Besides increased port density, the 16-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet module has reduced power consumption. It uses half the power consumption per port compared to the 8-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet module, providing substantial power savings to the customer. The 16-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet module can operate in a mix of oversubscription mode and performance mode, providing maximum flexibility for the customer to connect some ports to servers and some ports to wiring closet uplinks. When operating in performance mode, the 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports can also be used to create a virtual switch link in a Cisco Catalyst 6500 virtual switching system (VSS).