Cisco Catalyst 9400 Line Cards Deep Dive

In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, networks must be agile, secure, and capable of handling ever-increasing demands from IoT, mobility, and cloud applications. The Cisco Catalyst 9400 Series switches stand as Cisco’s premier modular enterprise access and aggregation switching platform, designed to transform your network for a hybrid world. At the heart of this transformation lie the versatile and powerful Cisco Catalyst 9400 Series Switch Line Cards. These line cards provide the physical connectivity and foundational capabilities that enable businesses to reimagine connections, reinforce security, and redefine the user experience. This document delves into the various line cards available for the Catalyst 9400 Series, exploring their features, specifications, and the benefits they bring to modern enterprise networks, ensuring your infrastructure is ready for today’s challenges and future innovations.

Product Overview

Cisco^® Catalyst^® 9400 Series switches are Cisco’s lead modular enterprise access switching platform and as part of the Catalyst 9000 family, are built to transform your network to handle a hybrid world where the workplace is anywhere, endpoints could be anything, and applications are hosted all over the place. The Catalyst 9400 Series, including the new Catalyst 9400 SUP-2/2XL supervisor and line cards, continues to shape the future with continued innovation that helps you reimagine connections, reinforce security and redefine the experience for your hybrid workforce big and small. These switches are foundational building blocks for SD-Access, Cisco’s leading enterprise architecture, offering unparalleled investment protection with a chassis architecture supporting up to 9 Tbps of system bandwidth and exceptional power delivery with high-density IEEE 802.3bt Power over Ethernet (PoE), providing both 60W (UPOE) and 90W (UPOE+).

Product Definition

Cisco Catalyst 9400 Series Switch Line Cards are modular components that provide the physical port interfaces for the Catalyst 9400 Series chassis. They offer a diverse range of connectivity options, including various speeds (1G, 2.5G, 5G, 10G, 25G, 40G, 100G), port types (RJ-45 copper, SFP, SFP+, SFP28, QSFP+, QSFP28 fiber), and Power over Ethernet capabilities (PoE, PoE+, Cisco UPOE^®, Cisco UPOE+^®). These line cards are designed for enterprise access and aggregation layers, supporting advanced security, IoT, mobility, and cloud strategies. They work in conjunction with the Catalyst 9400 Supervisor Engines, which handle packet processing, Quality of Service (QoS), and overall system management. The modular design allows for flexibility, scalability, and investment protection, enabling networks to adapt to evolving business requirements.

Product Model Tech Table

The Cisco Catalyst 9400 Series offers a wide array of line cards to meet diverse networking needs. Table 1 below summarizes the port specifications for the available line cards, detailing the number of ports, port speed, port type, and compatibility with different Catalyst 9400 Series chassis (C9404R, C9407R, C9410R).