I have noticed that these numbers are actually not necessarily accurate either.
The Catalyst 6509 has a backplane quoted as having 256Mb/sec, 128Mb/sec, 32Mb/sec and 16Mb/sec. Which is true? Sort of they all are, from my current information. There are only empty traces right now for the 256G backplane. These new switch fabric/line cards are not yet shipping and the current ones *do not touch* those high speed traces. It will require at least one of the two center slots to be empty for the fabric and some (as yet unknown 0-16) number of ports on the switch fabric cards. So all you have now is the 16G Full Duplex which is still quite a bit, but definitely not 256G (or even 128G Full Duplex ;-) ).
The current backplane is quoted as either 32G total or 16G Full duplex. Kind of like the Marketing version of Fast Etherchannel being 200Mb/per link (or 100Mb Full Duplex). There are other issues with it's Jumbo frame support as well, but that is another story...
BTW, I there are some Cisco docs that re-badge the Cat5500 backplane as a 7.2G (3 x 1.2G *Full Duplex*)... Is this really the case?
I still think Cisco makes some great stuff, but you have to dig more since marketing is replacing truthfulness everywhere. I believe Cisco is not alone in this... I am thankful we have access to a few excellent Cisco folks to help us keep this straight as the big company does not do it well anymore.
Take care,
Corey McCormick
