The Cisco Catalyst 4948-10GE delivers wire-speed throughput with low latency for data-intensive applications using a 136-Gbps switching fabric with a 102-million packets per second (mpps) forwarding rate in hardware for Layer 2-4 traffic. High-performance switching is delivered regardless of the number of route entries or Layer 3 and 4 services enabled. Hardware-based Cisco Express Forwarding routing architecture allows for increased scalability and performance. X2 10 Gigabit Ethernet optics provide 20 Gigabit Ethernet wire-speed uplinks for maximum throughput of traffic.