Catalyst 6500 Series Supervisor Engine 2 Flash image with CiscoView and SSH, Cisco Catalyst OS 8.3, Spare
<b>Cisco® Catalyst® Operating System (Catalyst OS) Software Release 8.3 for the Supervisor Engine Supports Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series Switch Supervisors</b>
<b>Overview</b>
Cisco Systems® Catalyst OS provides several innovative features in the areas of high availability, operational manageability, security, and quality of service (QoS), allowing customers to deploy scalable, highly available, and secure networks from the access layer to the WAN edge. Cisco Catalyst OS, as a Layer 2 forwarding software, targets the wiring closets or access layer service deployments. With Cisco Catalyst OS and Cisco IOS® Software, the system in a hybrid mode is used for offering Layer 2 through 4 services suited for WAN edge, core, and distribution layer deployments. Cisco is committed to delivering feature enhancements in Cisco Catalyst OS, supporting Layer 2 through 7 services with existing and advanced supervisor engines and modules.
Cisco Catalyst OS Software Release 8.3 supports three generations of supervisor engines—Supervisor Engine 1A, Supervisor Engine 2, and the Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series Supervisor Engine 720.
Cisco Catalyst OS 8.3 supports all hardware and software supported in Release 8.2 and brings the following important benefits to the Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series:
-Cisco Catalyst OS 8.3 introduces support for policy feature card (PFC)3BXL. The PFC3BXL firmly positions the Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series with Cisco Catalyst OS 8.3 hybrid in the most demanding high-performance core network environments.
-Cisco Catalyst OS 8.3 enables support for the 48-port Small Form-Factor Pluggable (SFP)-based module (WS-X6748-SFP).
-Cisco Catalyst OS 8.3 brings the latest innovations in wiring closet security—"Cisco Catalyst Security Toolkit" consisting of Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) Snooping, Dynamic Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) Inspection, and IP Source Guard. Together, these innovations offer the highest level of security in the intelligent wiring closet.
-Cisco Catalyst OS 8.3 adds Secure Shell (SSH) Protocol v2 and significant identity-based network security enhancements—802.1x unidirectional controlled port, 802.1x one-to-many logical VLANs, 802.1x with access control list (ACL) assignment and 802.1x Domain Name System (DNS) resolution for RADIUS servers. Together with the security toolkit and SSHv2, these enhancements make the Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series with Cisco Catalyst OS 8.3 the leading platform for wiring closet security.
-Metro Ethernet deployments get an enhancement with the introduction of advanced features in Cisco Catalyst OS 8.3—mapping of inner .1p to outer .1p tags, limit MAC address learning, port security on trunk ports and Policy Based Forwarding (PBF) enhancements. With Catalyst OS 8.3, the Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series extends its leadership in Layer 2 Metro Ethernet deployments.
-Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series with Cisco Catalyst OS 8.3 continues delivery of high availability solutions with the introduction of Gateway Load-Balancing Protocol (GLBP) and Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP) for standards-based and highly available switching deployments.
-Highly scalable multicast solutions with the introduction of Bidirectional Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM), the latest in a chain of innovations that has made the Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series the leading platform for IP Multicast. Also included in Cisco Catalyst OS 8.3 is Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) v3 with multicast multilayer switching, so that hardware forwarding entries now use IGMPv3 state for much enhanced constraining of Layer 3 flows.
-Full compliance with the 802.1s standard for Multiple Spanning Trees (MST) and MST on VLAN Trunking Protocol (VTP) v3.
-Most important, Cisco Catalyst OS 8.3 provides more compelling reasons for customers to continue migration from their Cisco Catalyst 5000 or Cisco Catalyst 5500 to Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series converged networks.
