Catalyst 6500

The Catalyst 6500 is a modular chassis network switch manufactured by Cisco Systems since 1999, capable of delivering speeds of up to "400 million packets per second".

A 6500 comprises a chassis, power supplies, one or two supervisors, line cards and service modules. A chassis can have 3, 4, 6, 9 or 13 slots each (Catalyst model 6503, 6504, 6506, 6509, or 6513, respectively) with the option of one or two modular power supplies. The supervisor engine provides centralised forwarding information and processing; up to two of these cards can be installed in a chassis to provide active/standby or stateful failover. The line cards provide port connectivity and service modules to allow for devices such as firewalls to be integrated within the switch.

Read more about Catalyst 6500:  Supervisor, Power Supplies, Online Insertion & Removal