Based on ground-breaking and industry-leading Cisco Catalyst 6500 series technology, the Cisco ME 6524 cost-effectively delivers on the stringent performance, reliability, and quality of service (QoS) requirements of triple-play services, as well as VPN services for Ethernet-to-the-Home (EttH), Ethernet-to-the-Business (EttB), and DSLAM aggregation deployments. The space- and power-optimized 1.5-rack-unit (1.5RU) Cisco ME 6524 enhances the industry-leading Cisco carrier Ethernet solution portfolio by extending highly advanced Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), QoS, multicast, and IPv6 features into Ethernet access and aggregation networks, facilitating scalable and service-rich Gigabit Ethernet access for both fiber and copper deployments.The Cisco ME 6524, equipped with the Policy Feature Card 3C (PFC3C) and Multilayer Switch Feature Card 2A (MSFC2A), extends the Catalyst 6500 series innovations to the service-provider access network. The PFC3C offers hardware-based MAC learning and increases the MAC address table capacity by 50 percent in comparison to the PFC3B and PFC3BXL. It strengthens security by protecting network resources and by intelligently granting access to subscribers, with features such as port-based and VLAN-based access control lists (ACLs), CPU rate limiters, port security, private VLAN, Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) snooping, and IEEE 802.1x. These security features are hardware-based and can be enabled concurrently without compromising system performance as traffic levels increase.The Cisco ME 6524 can scale to support MPLS and IPv6 applications for layer 2 and layer 3 VPN services integration.