Maximum 29XX switches on a 6500 series

Question

Hello,
is there a recommended maximum of user ports i can connect directly to a 6500 series core switch?
So I have a situation with about 80 24-ports switches (in stacks of 2 or 3) connected with fiber to the core switch. Now one of the network managers states we need a distribution layer cause performance in the 6500 will drop. Reason for this is that the 29XX series switches do not support layer 3.
Is this correct? And does the added layer 3 functionality in a (extra) distribution layer increase performance in the core? Even though almost all traffic is user - server traffic and servers are connected to core?
Anyone know? THanks!

Answer 1

Hi Friend,
Which sup engine do you have and is there any switch fabric module you are running. Cat6500' are cross-fabric chassis which gives 32GBPS backplane switch capacity bedefualt. If you have SFM (switch fabric module) installed then it will give 256 GBPS of backplane capacity.
If you are running Sup720, you have 720 GBPS backplane capacity and you will see a greater performance by cat65K.
If you dont have SFM or sup 720, then yes with direct access switches uplink to Core might slow down the performance of the core switch.
If that's the case I would suggest to got for hierarchical design and add another layer of the architecture i.e distribution layer.Now what you can do with this additional layer, is that you can uplink your access layer to it, have your inter-vlan routing done on thius layer, have to access control policy deployed at this layer.
This addtion layer and the above functionalities will off load the processing of traffic at core and core will be efficient enough to process the traffic as fast as it can. This is a abosultely correct approach.
Please, write back for any qurstions.
HTH, Please rate if it does.
-amit singh