That Might be Interesting - Route Processor and Switch Processor

Okay the posts have been a bit slow due to work commitments and the last minute cramming for the written. Yes you did read that right I am a leave it till the last minute person (mental note to self really need to work on changing this habit) and am cramming for my written. I will let you know if it is a successful technique once I try the exam. At the moment chances of this approach succeeding are rated as very slim.

Anyhow I learnt something today that I thought was pretty interesting hey everyone else probably knew it anyway but I did n't and if there is one other poor soul out there like me that did not know this then this post might be worth while.

I have worked with plenty of Cat 6000, 6500 and even some old 5000 series switches where you can easily tell the difference between the switching part and the routing part of the switch. The routing part would be running IOS and the switching part CatOS. However on our new Cat 6500 with the sup720 installed it is not so easy, it looks like the whole switch is running IOS. So I was wondering if there still was separate switching and routing functions. Turns out there is see below:

When you connect you are in the routing part of the switch. How can you tell well the prompt looks like the one I have included in the capture below and when you run a show process cpu, you will notice the processor is not working that hard. Also a lot of the processes as you can see from the ones I have shown in the screen capture are running things you would expect to see at Layer3.

FERRETSW01#show process cpu
CPU utilization for five seconds: 1%/0%; one minute: 2%; five minutes: 3%
PID Runtime(ms) Invoked uSecs 5Sec 1Min 5Min TTY Process
1 0 254 0 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 Chunk Manager
2 12 99006 0 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 Load Meter
180 5636 16094 350 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 IP RIB Update
181 0 1 0 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 CHKPT DevTest
182 0 1 0 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 IP Traceroute
183 0 1 0 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 Socket Timers
184 4984 30913376 0 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 HSRP (Standby)
185 4 3 1333 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 FR HA
186 900 1857583 0 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 TCP Timer
187 16 113 141 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 TCP Protocols
312 0 8253 0 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 SPA ENTITY Proce
313 6024 999692 6 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 OSPF-5 Router
319 0 2 0 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 EEM ED CLI
320 0 2 0 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 EEM ED Counter
321 0 2 0 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 EM ED GOLD
322 0 2 0 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 EEM ED Interface
323 0 2 0 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 EEM ED IOSWD
324 0 2 0 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 EEM ED None
332 0 2 0 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 Call Home proces
333 0 1 0 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 IP SLA Monitor M
341 0 1 0 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 CWAN OIR IPC Rea
342 0 99 0 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 IP SNMP
343 0 5 0 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 PDU DISPATCHER
344 12 5 2400 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 SNMP ENGINE
345 0 1 0 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 SNMP ConfCopyPro
346 860 654 1314 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 SNMP Traps
347 0 2 0 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 T+ Admin
348 13504 583439 23 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 NTP
349 0 1 0 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 Connection Mgr
350 23380 302763 77 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 BGP Router
351 238396 33207 7179 0.00% 0.03% 0.00% 0 BGP Scanner
352 18076 208907 86 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 OSPF-2 Hello
353 16928 213565 79 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 OSPF-5 Hello
361 364 1412 257 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 AAA Accounting
362 4 1803 2 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 TACACS+

Okay so now we know there is a Route Processor which we probably knew before, how do you get to the Switch Processor? Well you enter the command below which is the cool bit (I think it is cool most of you normal people who are reading this probably do not).

FERRETSW01#remote login switch
Trying Switch ...
Entering CONSOLE for Switch
Type "^C^C^C" to end this session

Now as you will see below the command prompt changes to have a -sp on the end to tell you, you are on the switch processor. Also notice the switch processor is doing a lot more work and take a look at some of the switch processes.

FERRETSW01-sp#show process cpu
CPU utilization for five seconds: 33%/5%; one minute: 28%; five minutes: 28%
PID Runtime(ms) Invoked uSecs 5Sec 1Min 5Min TTY Process
140 0 1 0 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 ADJ MGR
141 6968 90 77422 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 ADJ_MGR
142 8108 635096 12 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 L2 Control Task
143 456400 2177979 209 0.00% 0.03% 0.01% 0 L2 Throttle Task
144 7340 198375 37 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 L2 Aging Task
145 8309208 240162 34598 1.59% 1.58% 1.65% 0 Vlan Statistics
146 32208 1155105 27 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 L2 PI_E consiste
147 2564 277202 9 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 EARL7 monitor ta
148 3678252 17609 208884 0.00% 0.77% 0.73% 0 TYFIB Table Mana
149 40 9059 4 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 CFIB-BGP Task
150 1680 6684 251 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 CFIB LC QUEUE BO
151 7924 546055 14 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 CFIB LC TIMER Ta
152 220 49457 4 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 CFIB LC STATS Ta
153 0 2 0 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 Gemini SP proces
177 576348 3213872 179 0.07% 0.07% 0.07% 0 Spanning Tree
178 293044 1487315 197 0.07% 0.06% 0.06% 0 UDLD
179 4 2 2000 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 capture process
180 0 17 0 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 Const Rate Limit
181 0 1 0 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 SP DHCP Snooping
182 0 97 0 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 802.1x switch
183 3228 38830 83 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 DTP Protocol
185 0 2 0 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 Ethernet OAM Pro
186 26784 31724 844 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 L2 MAC oob sync
187 14052 420973 33 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 mls-hal Process
188 336 27742 12 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 mfib-const-lc Pr
189 28576 5462414 5 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 Mcast Hw Agent6
190 0 3 0 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 mls-msc-ha proce
191 64 390 164 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 mls-msc Process
192 0 1 0 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 mls-msc-cc Proce
193 0 13 0 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 PIM Snooping Pro
205 4 2 2000 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 CEF LC IPC Backg
206 35120 681339 51 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 CEF LC Stats
359 0 12 0 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 ADJ background
363 100884 4226254 23 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 SCP async: LCP#5
364 530692 5393471 98 0.00% 0.07% 0.06% 0 DiagCard9/-1
365 48 83 578 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 SpanTree Helper
366 20 86 232 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 1 Virtual Exec
367 436 637 684 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 SpanTree Flush
368 44068 918131 47 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0 SCP async: LCP#9
369 45920 722416 63 0.00% 0.01% 0.00% 0 LACP Protocol

Okay while that was pretty interesting to me at least, what other things is this useful for? Well it turns out that if you have an ACE module installed in your switch when you do a show vlan. You will see the vlan that is connected to the ACE but you will not see any ports assigned to it. You have to go under the switch processor and do a show vlan there and then you will see the ports assigned to the vlan.

However those exciting screenshots will have to wait till the next installment of that might be interesting as I have a couple more minutes before bedtime and I am sure I have forgotten some of the IPv6 addresses ranges I crammed earlier :-)