Cisco Systems 7600 manual Overview

Chapter 2 Route Switch Processors and Supervisor Engines

Overview

Overview

The supervisor engine or route switch processor (RSP) is a module that is installed in one of the card slots in the router. The supervisor engine or RSP provides switching and local and remote management for the router and also contains the uplink ports for the router. Both types of modules (supervisor engine and RSP) perform the same functions in the router.

Cisco 7600 series routers support the following types of RSPs and supervisor engines:

•Route Switch Processor 720—Supported on all chassis (including enhanced) except the Cisco 7603 router and the Cisco OSR-7609. Available in Cisco IOS Release 12.2SRB and later releases.

•RSP720-10GE (with 10GE uplink ports)—Supported on the Cisco 7604 and 7609 routers and the Cisco 7603-S, 7606-S, and 7609-S routers (enhanced chassis). Available in Cisco IOS Release 12.2SRC and later releases.

•Supervisor Engine 720—Supported on all Cisco 7600 series routers.

•Supervisor Engine 32—Supported on all but the Cisco 7603 router.

•Supervisor Engine 2—Supported on all but the Cisco 7613 router. The Supervisor Engine 2 is no longer supported in Cisco IOS Release 12.2SRA and later releases.

Although the router can operate with a single supervisor engine or RSP, you can also install a second redundant module (of the same type) in the chassis. Only one module is active at a time. The second module acts as a “standby,” serving as a backup if the active module fails.

Note If the system does not include a redundant supervisor engine or RSP, you can install another type of module in the slot reserved for the redundant supervisor engine or RSP.

The supervisor engine or RSP contains the following integrated daughter cards that perform forwarding and routing and provide the protocols supported on the router. Several configurations of daughter cards are supported (as shown in Table 2-1).

•Policy Feature Card (PFC) is the forwarding plane and does the following:

–Performs Layer 2 and Layer 3 forwarding.

–Enforces access control list (ACL) functions.

–Performs policing and marking for quality of service (QoS) traffic.

–Collects Netflow statistics.

Note A high-capacity (XL) PFC is also available. The XL version (PFC3BXL or PFC3CXL) provides more memory for more routing table and netflow cache capacity than a PFC. It allows routing and forwarding processes to be offloaded from the supervisor engine or RSP to the PFC, thus increasing the performance of the supervisor engine or RSP.

•Multilayer Switch Feature Card (MSFC) is the control plane and does the following:

–Performs routing for the chassis. The MSFC contains the route processor (RP) and switch processor (SP) for the router.

–Runs Layer 2 and Layer 3 protocols, such as the Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) and others.

For information about supported protocols, see the Cisco 7600 Series Router Cisco IOS Software Configuration Guide and the release notes for the software version running on the router.

Cisco 7600 Series Router Supervisor Engine and Route Switch Processor Guide

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