Cisco® introduces the Cisco Catalyst® 6500 Supervisor Engine 32 Programmable Intelligent Services Accelerator (PISA), the next generation supervisor engine for the Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series of modular switches, delivering superior and integrated deep packet inspection, application awareness, security, availability, and manageability services for the networks of small and medium-sized businesses, enterprises, and service providers. This supervisor engine is ideal for securing campus access networks, converged services MAN/WAN applications and small/medium backbone functions.
The PISA on the Supervisor Engine 32 PISA provides hardware acceleration of intelligent services such as network-based application recognition (NBAR) and flexible packet matching (FPM) at multigigabit speeds, in addition to the management and control plane functions traditionally provided by the multilayer switch feature card (MSFC). The Supervisor Engine 32 PISA is offered with the Policy Feature Card 3B (PFC3B), to ensure feature and performance compatibility with the Cisco Catalyst 6500 Supervisor Engine 32.
Announcement Summary
Introduction of the two versions of Supervisor Engine 32 PISA:
• Supervisor Engine 32 PISA with eight Gigabit Ethernet uplinks (shown in Figure 1)
Figure 1. Supervisor Engine 32 PISA with Gigabit Ethernet Uplinks
• Supervisor Engine 32 PISA with two 10 Gigabit Ethernet uplinks (shown in Figure 2)
Figure 2. Supervisor Engine 32 PISA with Two 10 Gigabit Ethernet Uplinks
Specifications
Table 1 summarizes the primary features available on the Supervisor Engine 32 PISA.
Table 1. Primary Features of the Supervisor Engine 32 PISA
Technology
Feature
Network Based Application Recognition at Multigigabit Speeds
• Provides the ability to discover protocols and applications running on the network
• Allows Intelligent traffic classification based on application type
• Supports addition of new protocols and applications using packet description language modules (PDLMs)
• Provides the ability to load new PDLM's without changing Cisco IOS Software releases and without rebooting the switch
• Supports a wide variety of applications and protocols, including:
- Enterprise applications: PCAnywhere, Citrix ICA, Microsoft SQL Server
- Streaming Media applications: Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP), CU SeeMe, Netshow, StreamWorks, VDOLive
- Network Mail Services: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol(SMTP), point of presence (POP3), Internet Mail Access Protocol (IMAP), Lotus Notes, Microsoft Exchange
- Internet: HTTP(Hypertext Transfer Protocol) , FTP (File Transfer Protocol), NNTP (Network News Transfer Protocol ), IRC (Internet Relay Chat)
• GUI based management using QoS Policy Manager (QPM)
Flexible Packet Matching at Multigigabit Speeds
• Provides next generation "Super ACL" pattern matching capability for granular and customized packet filtering
• Provides the ability to match on arbitrary bits of a packet at arbitrary depth (offset) in the packet header and payload hence allowing detection of malicious patterns deep within the packet
• Allows users to define customized classification criteria for stateless traffic using CLI or off-box via XML
• Provides the ability to install new filters on switches without reload
• Thwarts worms like Slammer and MyDoom and protects against malicious attacks such as Fragmented UDP, HTTP Vulnerabilities and TCP SYNC floods
• Supports Flexible Configuration in the Cisco Security Manager to push configuration files to switches
IPv4 Routing
• Static Routing
• Open Shortest Path First (OSPF and OSPFv2)
• Enhanced Interior Group Routing Protocol (EIGRP)
• Intermediate System-to-Intermediate System (IS-IS) Protocol
• Border Gateway Protocol Version 4 (BGPv4)
• Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD) for OSPF and IS-IS
IPv6
• Native IPv6
• Routing Information Protocol next generation (RIPng), MP-BGP4, OSPFv3
• IPv6 over IPv4 Tunnels
• Internet Control Message Protocol version 6 (ICMPv6)
