The Catalyst 8500 series Multiservice Switch Routers integrate multiservice ATM switching with wire-speed Layer 3 switching for Gigabit Ethernet into a single platform that also supports advanced Cisco IOS services. The Catalyst 8500 family delivers campus and metropolitan network solutions with scalable performance, lower cost of ownership, and the features needed by intranet-based applications to deliver increased business productivity.The Catalyst 8540 provides a 40-Gbps switching fabric with aggregate throughput of 24 million packets per second (pps) for Layer 3 switching. Deployed as an ATM switch, the Catalyst 8540 provides wire-speed nonblocking switching on all interfaces. The Catalyst 8540 uses a 13-slot, modular chassis with optional dual, fault-tolerant, load-sharing power supplies. The Catalyst 8540 can be deployed with optional, redundant route processors and optional, redundant switch processors. Typically the devices are deployed as redundant systems within a campus providing the ultimate in redundancy as redundant systems can back each other up and provide incremental bandwidth and performance.