Chapter 1 Sip, Ssc, And Spa Product Overview - Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series Hardware Installation Manual

Introduction to SIPs and SPAs
SPA Services Cards
The following list describes some of the general characteristics of an SSC:
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Shared Port Adapters
The following list describes some of the general characteristics of a SPA:
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Figure 1-1
Single-height SPA
Catalyst 6500 Series Switch SIP, SSC, and SPA Hardware Installation Guide
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An SSC is a carrier card that inserts into a switch slot like a line card. It provides no network
connectivity.
An SSC provides one or more subslots, which are used to contain one or more SPAs. The supported
SPAs do not provide interface ports for network connectivity, but provide certain services.
During normal operation, the SSC should reside in a switch that is fully populated either with
functional SPAs in all subslots or with a blank filler plate (SPA-BLANK=) inserted in all empty
subslots.
SSCs support online insertion and removal (OIR) with SPAs inserted in their subslots. SPAs also
support OIR and can be inserted or removed independently from the SSC.
A SPA is a modular type of port adapter that inserts into a subslot of a compatible SIP carrier card
to provide network connectivity and increased interface port density. A SIP can hold one or more
SPAs, depending on the SIP type.
Some SPAs provide services rather than network connectivity, and they insert into subslots of
compatible SSCs. For example, the IPSec VPN SPA provides services such as IP Security (IPSec)
encryption and decryption, generic routing encapsulation (GRE), and Internet Key Exchange (IKE)
key generation.
SPAs are available in the following sizes, as shown in
Single-height SPA—Inserts into one SIP subslot.
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Double-height SPA—Inserts into two single, vertically aligned SIP subslots.
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Single-Height and Double-Height SPA Sizes
Front of SIP
Double-height SPA
Chapter 1 SIP, SSC, and SPA Product Overview
Figure 1-1 and Figure 1-2:
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