- When the Distributed Forwarding Card is installed, Line cards that are DFC-enabled make forwarding decisions locally, leaving the supervisor engine free to perform routing and management functions
- The Distributed Forwarding Card supports Cisco's distributed Cisco Express Forwarding (CEF)-based forwarding architecture
- The Distributed Forwarding Card replicates Layer 2 and 3 forwarding logic in hardware as well as a bus on each line card
The Catalyst 6500 Distributed Forwarding Card is installed in DFC-enabled line-card modules that perform distributed forwarding supported by the Catalyst 6500 Supervisor Engine 2 as a field upgrade.