Cisco Catalyst 8500 and 8500L Series Edge Platforms Software Configuration Guide

Overview

Updated: February 6, 2026

Overview

Introduces the Catalyst 8500 and 8500L Series Edge platforms and their specific hardware models. Learn about the performance capabilities and supported features for each router to determine the appropriate configuration for your network environment.

Cisco Catalyst 8500 and 8500L Series Edge platforms significantly increases services performance, router throughput, and router scale at lower costs.

This document covers configuration details of these models:

Catalyst 8500 Platforms (C8500-12X4QC, C8500-12X and C8500-20X6C)
Catalyst 8500L Platform (C8500L-8S4X)

Table 1. Catalyst 8500 and Edge 8500L Platforms
Features	C8500-12X4QC	C8500-12X	C8500-20X6C	C8500L-8S4X
Support for In-Service Software Upgrade (ISSU)	Not supported	Not supported	Not supported	Not supported
Data plane processing	QFP 3.0	QFP 3.0	QFP 3.0	Software-based
Support for Unified Threat Defense(UTD)	Not supported	Not supported	Not Supported	Support exists
Support for Fast Reroute(FRR)	Not supported	Not supported	Support exists	Not supported
Dynamic allocation of cores	Not supported	Not supported	Not supported	Not supported

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