Cisco Brings 40 and 100 Gigabit Ethernet to its Switching Portfolio

Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) is giving more power to its Catalyst and Nexus switch customers with new modules that support the 40 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) and 100GbE standards. The 40 and 100 GbE standards were approved in June of 2010 and ever since, networking vendors have been incrementally adding those capabilities to their platforms.
The Catalyst 6500 switching platform is among the most widely deployed Cisco switches in the market today. It's been updated with new modules and capabilities over the years including the Virtual Switching System, which lets users view multiple physical switches as one logical one. Now, the 6500 is getting a 40GbE boost with the new 6904 line card.
"With this line card we're able to load up a Catalyst 6500 with up to 44 ports of 40GbE," Craig Huitema, director of Marketing at Cisco's Datacenter Group, told