The Cisco® Catalyst® 6500 Series/Cisco 7600 Series Supervisor Engine 720-3BXL (Sup 720-3BXL) is the third-generation supervisor engine for the Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series Switch and Cisco 7600 Series Router. It addresses the growing data-plane requirements of service provider and enterprise customers by delivering scalable, enhanced services such as hardware-accelerated IPv4, IPv6, and Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS). The Cisco Sup 720-3BXL integrates a high-capacity crossbar switching fabric that can deliver up to 40-Gbps capacity per slot for a total system capacity of 720 Gbps.

The Cisco Sup 720-3BXL integrates a high-performance 720-Gbps switch fabric with a new routing and forwarding engine into a single module. The integrated switch fabric provides up to 40-Gbps full-duplex capacity per slot, allowing it to support third-generation high-performance, high-density Gigabit Ethernet and 10-Gigabit Ethernet interfaces as well as all existing LAN, WAN, and services modules, including the widely deployed FlexWAN and optical services modules to address a broad range of WAN edge aggregation deployments from DS-0 through OC-48/STM-16.

The Cisco Sup 720-3BXL builds on the proven Cisco Express Forwarding architecture by supporting centralized forwarding (Cisco Express Forwarding) and distributed forwarding (distributed Cisco Express Forwarding) to provide a highly scalable and cost-effective platform.

The Cisco Sup 720-3BXL delivers a modular, resilient, scalable, and secure Layer 2 or Layer 3 solution by:
- Enabling advanced IP services such as MPLS, IPv6, and quality of service (QoS).
- Supporting high-performance, third-generation Ethernet interfaces.
- Delivering predictable and scalable system performance up to a sustained 400 Mpps using distributed forwarding cards (DFCs).
- Scaling hardware-capable Forwarding Information Base (FIB) table entries to 1 million routes.
- Supporting all three generations of Ethernet line cards, optical services modules, FlexWAN, and services modules for investment protection.
- Delivering up to 40-Gbps full-duplex capacity per slot.
- Delivering 200-Mpps hardware-based IPv6 using DFCs.
- Providing for 256,000 NetFlow entries.

Extensive feature support such as QoS mechanisms, hardware-based generic-routing-encapsulation (GRE) tunneling, and access control lists (ACLs) enable customers to build high-performance, feature-rich networks capable of offering services such as MPLS VPNs, metropolitan (metro) aggregation, and various WAN edge services.