In addition to these expansion modules, the Cisco Nexus 5548P and 5548UP support a Layer 3 daughter card that can be ordered with the system or as a spare (field upgradable). This daughter card provides up to 160 Gbps of Layer 3 forwarding capability (240 million packets per second [mpps]) that can be shared by all 48 ports in the chassis. As shown in Figure 7, the Layer 3 daughter card does not take up one of the expansion slots on the rear of the chassis, but instead is installed by replacing the Layer 2 I/O module (N55‑DL2) that is located on the front of the chassis.



In addition to these expansion modules, the Cisco Nexus 5596UP and 5596T support a Layer 3 module that provides up to 160 Gbps of Layer 3 forwarding capability (240 mpps) that can be shared by all the I/O ports in the chassis.



Version 2 uses a newer version of the Layer 3 ASIC and enables higher table sizes in a future software release from 8K host entries to 16K host entries or from 4K multicast routes to 8K multicast routes (IPv4).