Cisco Systems Catalyst 6009 Network Switch Review

Bottom-Line: If you need a reliable, scalable, robust enterprise-class networking switch look no further then the Cisco Catalyst 6009.         

Bellwether Cisco Systems is the largest manufacturer of network switches and routers in the world; the company dominates the global enterprise switch and router market.  Where once there was Digital, IBM, Bay Systems, 3Com, HP, Compaq, Lucent Technologies, there is now really only one choice for enterprise class switching, Cisco Systems. 

The business I work for has numerous Cisco Catalyst series network switches that route network traffic over a fairly wide area.  But at the center of it all is a Cisco Catalyst 6009 network switch that has been in service over five years and has never once experienced downtime due to internal failure.     

The Catalyst 6009 Switch

The Cisco Catalyst 6009 Family of switches delivers high-performance, multilayer switching for campus-wide networks. Cisco designed the 6000 series to address the ever increasing demands for high-availability (very important especially in NOC's and data centers), gigabit scalability, and multilayer switching.  The Catalyst 6000 family (6006 and 6009) delivers a wide range of intelligent campus solutions, and is robust enough to fit almost any networking need. 

The chassis of the Catalyst 6009 is large, black, heavy, and rack mountable.  The power plugs into the front of the unit at the bottom where the dual power supplies reside.  The Catalyst 6009 is so named because it has nine open slots for inserting up to nine networking modules into the chassis. 

The Catalyst 6009 support a wide range of interface types and densities, including support for up to 384 10/100 Ethernet, 192 100FX Fast Ethernet, and up to 130 Gigabit Ethernet ports. The Catalyst 6000 Series provides backplane bandwidth of 32 Gigabits per second (Gbps) and multilayer switching up to 30 Megabyte packets per second  (Mpps).

The Catalyst 6009 includes 1300W/2500W redundant hot-swappable power supplies and fans, supervisor & line-card modules.  The switch is designed for high availability with almost every plug-in module designed to be hot-swappable, allowing units to be added, removed without powering down the switch and interrupting critical network traffic flow.

My Viewpoint

Since installing the Cisco Catalyst 6009 some five years ago, we have yet to experience any downtime and we run the switch 24/7/365.  There is very little maintenance to perform; I have had to clean the fan vent once.  This switch works and works well.  Packet throughput is well within tolerance and actual packet collisions are rare. 

The Cisco Catalyst 6009 is not a cheap solution, but it is a reliable one.  Prices for a used chassis run from around $7000 - $10,000 depending on the age of the unit.  These prices do not include the plug-in Ethernet networking  modules.  However, if you need a reliable, scalable, robust networking switch look no further then the Cisco Catalyst 6009.