I performed further testing using EtherChannel to bond the two 10 Gig uplinks between the switches and again running meshed 16-port Gig throughput and forwarding tests. The balancing between the uplinks is fully configurable and dealt well with the load presented. Using that test bed and 802.1q trunking between the two switches with the 4948-10GE as a switching core, I spanned the test links across eight VLANs and again ran throughput tests. Again, the resulting packet loss was measured in hundredths of a percent, or basically indistinguishable from wire-rate 10 Gigabit Ethernet.

Ready to roll

Try as I might, I couldn't get the Supervisor Engine II-Plus-10GE in the 4506 to stumble, even when presented with oversubscribed workloads and heavy QoS overhead. The port density offered by the 4506 chassis is substantial: My evaluation unit came with 48 10/100 copper ports, 48 SFP (Small Form-Factor Pluggable) 10/100 fiber ports, and 18 SFP/copper gigabit interfaces. The 4506 can handle a maximum of 240 gigabit copper interfaces, each supporting 802.3af power over Ethernet. Also, 240 gigabit fiber ports are supported, making the 4506 with the Supervisor Engine II-Plus-10GE a large distribution layer possibility.

With redundant 1,000W power supplies, the power consumption isn't as substantial as one might think -- and I ran all my tests using a single power supply.

For use in a redundant configuration, the Cisco 4507R chassis is required, and two Supervisor II-Plus-10GE supervisors may be used in a fail-over fashion. Although four 10-Gig ports are present between the two supervisors, only two may be utilized in this configuration.