The Cisco® Catalyst® 4500 Series Switches enable Borderless Networks, providing high performance, mobile, and secure user experiences through Layer 2-4 switching investments. They enable security, mobility, application performance, video, and energy savings over an infrastructure that supports resiliency, virtualization, and automation. Cisco Catalyst 4500 Series Switches provide borderless performance, scalability, and services with reduced total cost of ownership (TCO) and superior investment protection.

The Cisco Catalyst 4500 (Figure 1) has a centralized forwarding architecture that enables collaboration, virtualization, and operational manageability through simplified operations. With forward and backward compatibility spanning multiple generations, the new Cisco Catalyst 4500E Series provides exceptional investment protection and deployment flexibility to meet the evolving needs of organizations of all sizes. The Cisco Catalyst 4500E Series platform has 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GE) uplinks and supports Power over Ethernet Plus (PoE+) and Universal PoE (UPOE), enabling customers to future proof their network.