Cisco Catalyst 6500 Content Switching Module network switch component

The Cisco® Content Switching Module (CSM) is a line card for the Cisco Catalyst® 6500 Series Switch that enhances the experience and response for client traffic to end points, such as groups of servers, caches, firewalls, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) devices, or VPN termination devices. The Cisco CSM provides a high-performance, cost-effective load-balancing solution for enterprise and Internet service provider networks, allowing these organizations to provide customers, employees, and business partners with the best possible online experience. The Cisco CSM meets the demands of high-speed content delivery networks, tracking network sessions and server load conditions in real time, and directing client requests to the appropriate device. Fault-tolerant Cisco CSM configurations maintain full state information and provide true hitless failover required for mission-critical applications.

The Cisco CSM provides the following benefits:

•Market-leading performance—The Cisco CSM establishes up to 165,000 connections per second and provides high-speed content switching while maintaining 1 million concurrent connections.

•Outstanding price-performance value—The Cisco CSM features a low connection cost and occupies a small footprint sliding into a slot in a new or existing Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series chassis.

•Optimized data center performance—The Cisco CSM allows organizations to increase the scalability and performance of server farms, cache clusters and groups of VPN, SSL and firewall devices. In addition, the Cisco CSM provides organizations with the highest level of device redundancy for business critical applications and services.

•Highly scalable solution—Multiple Cisco CSMs can be installed in the same Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series chassis to provide scalable performance as well as redundancy.

•Ease of configuration—The Cisco CSM uses the same Cisco IOS® command-line interface (CLI) that is used to configure the Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series Switch.

•Enhances existing infrastructure—By adding a Cisco CSM to a new or existing Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series Switch, customers can enable every port in the Cisco Catalyst switch to perform Layer 2 to Layer 7 services, providing the capability to intelligently switch traffic.