Cisco Catalyst C9600X-SUP-2 Supervisor Engine 2

High-Performance Supervisor Engine for Cisco Catalyst C9606R Modular Switches

Product Overview

The Cisco Catalyst C9600X-SUP-2 is a high-performance Supervisor Engine 2 designed for the Cisco Catalyst 9600 Series modular switching platform. It provides the processing power, switching capacity, routing scale, and programmability required for large enterprise campus core, aggregation, and high-speed network deployments.

Designed for the Cisco Catalyst C9606R 6-slot modular chassis, the Supervisor Engine 2 delivers up to 25.6 Tbps system switching capacity, up to 6.4 Tbps switching capacity per slot, and up to 8 Bpps forwarding performance.

The supervisor is powered by an Intel 2.7 GHz 8-core x86 processor and includes 32 GB DDR4 DRAM and 16 GB Flash memory. It also supports up to 960 GB SATA SSD storage for supported applications and network services.

Key Features

Enterprise-Class Switching Performance

Cisco Silicon One Q200 Architecture

The Cisco Silicon One Q200 provides the processing foundation for the C9600X-SUP-2. It is designed to deliver high-speed packet processing, advanced routing, switching, and programmable network capabilities.

The architecture provides high-capacity packet buffering and supports High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), helping the platform manage demanding traffic patterns while maintaining high performance and low latency.

The supervisor supports advanced Layer 2 and Layer 3 forwarding, IPv4 and IPv6 routing, multicast, ACL processing, QoS, and other enterprise networking functions.

Processing, Memory and Storage

With 32 GB DDR4 DRAM and 16 GB Flash memory, the C9600X-SUP-2 is designed for large-scale network deployments. The module also supports up to 960 GB SATA SSD storage.

Management and Network Interfaces

The C9600X-SUP-2 is a supervisor module rather than a fixed-port access switch. Network interfaces are provided through compatible Catalyst 9600 Series line cards installed in the C9606R chassis.

The supervisor provides management and console interfaces for administration, monitoring, configuration, and troubleshooting. High-speed data connectivity is delivered through the installed line cards.

Cisco Catalyst C9606R Compatibility

The C9600X-SUP-2 is designed for the Cisco Catalyst C9606R 6-slot modular chassis. The platform supports redundant supervisor configurations for increased availability.

The C9606R chassis provides four line-card positions and dedicated supervisor positions. Compatible line cards can provide high-density Ethernet connectivity across multiple speeds, including 10G, 25G, 40G, 50G, 100G, 200G, and 400G depending on the selected hardware.

Cisco IOS XE Platform

The C9600X-SUP-2 operates with Cisco IOS XE, Cisco's modern enterprise operating system designed for secure, programmable, automated, and scalable networking.

IOS XE supports model-driven programmability, NETCONF, RESTCONF, gNMI, YANG data models, streaming telemetry, on-box Python, Zero-Touch Provisioning, and supported application hosting capabilities.

These capabilities help organizations simplify network deployment, monitoring, automation, configuration, and lifecycle management.

Advanced Routing and Network Scale

The Supervisor Engine 2 is designed for large enterprise networks and supports up to 2 million IPv4 routes, 1 million IPv6 routes, and 256,000 MAC addresses.

High-scale routing, hardware-based forwarding, advanced ACL processing, QoS, multicast, and Layer 2 switching capabilities enable the platform to support demanding campus core and aggregation environments.

Ideal Applications

• Enterprise campus core networks
• Large-scale campus aggregation
• High-speed enterprise edge networks
• Data-intensive network infrastructures
• Government and institutional networks
• Cloud-connected enterprise environments
• High-availability modular switching deployments
• Networks requiring advanced routing and automation

Built for Next-Generation Enterprise Networks

The Cisco Catalyst C9600X-SUP-2 combines Cisco Silicon One Q200 processing, up to 25.6 Tbps system switching capacity, 8 Bpps forwarding performance, large-scale routing support, high-capacity memory, and Cisco IOS XE to provide a powerful foundation for modern enterprise core and aggregation networks.