Product Overview

The Cisco Catalyst 6509-E is an enhanced 9-slot chassis designed for the Catalyst 6500 Series. It provides high port densities suitable for wiring closet, distribution, and core network deployments. The chassis is backward-compatible with all existing supervisors, line cards, switch fabrics, and software releases, continuing the Catalyst 6500 tradition of investment protection.

Key enhancements of the “E” series chassis include increased overall system power capacity to scale industry-leading Power over Ethernet (PoE) port-density.

Key Specifications

The following technical specifications are compiled from the official Cisco hardware installation guides.

Feature Category	Specification Details
Product Type	Enhanced 9-slot chassis, 15RU (Rack Unit)
Backplane Bandwidth	720 Gbps
Forwarding Rate	387 Mpps
MAC Address Table	64K
Slots	9 modular slots
Supported Supervisor Engines	Supervisor Engine 2, 32, 720, 720-10GE, and 2T. – Sup 32/720/2T must be installed in slot 5 or 6. – Supervisor Engine 2T requires a 3000 W or greater power supply.
Power Supplies Supported	One or two power supplies (AC or DC), can operate in redundant or combined mode. Supported models include: – WS-CAC-2500W (2500 W AC) – WS-CDC-2500W (2500 W DC) – WS-CAC-3000W (3000 W AC) – WS-CAC-4000W-US/INT (4000 W AC) – PWR-4000-DC (4000 W DC) – WS-CAC-6000W (6000 W AC) – WS-CAC-8700W-E (8700 W AC).
Fan Tray	One hot-swappable fan tray. Part number: WS-C6509-E-FAN-846 CFM. – Contains nine individual fans (not field-replaceable, replace the tray as a unit). – Note: A 2500W or higher power supply is required to power the high-speed fan tray.

Environmental & Physical Specifications

Item	Specification (as per Cisco documentation)
Operating Temperature	Certified for operation: 32° to 104°F (0° to 40°C). Designed and tested for operation: 32° to 131°F (0° to 55°C).
Non-operating Temperature	Chassis unpackaged: -4° to 149°F (-20° to 65°C).
Operating Humidity (RH)	5% to 90% (noncondensing).
Non-operating Humidity	5% to 95% (noncondensing).
Operating Altitude	Certified: 0 to 6500 ft (0 to 2000 m).
Dimensions (H x W x D)	622 x 445 x 460 mm.
Weight	27.3 kg (chassis only).
Max Power Draw	4000W (system maximum).