/mcpData sheet Cisco public © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. High-performance IP routing The Cisco Express Forwarding hardware routing architecture delivers extremely high-performance IP routing in the Cisco Catalyst 9300 Series Switches, based on: • IP unicast routing protocols (including static, Routing Information Protocol version 1 [RIPv1], RIPv2, RIPng, and Open Shortest Path First [OSPF]) are supported for small network routing applications with the Network Essentials stack. Equal-cost routing facilitates Layer 3 load balancing and redundancy across the stack. • Advanced IP unicast routing protocols (including full OSPF, Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol [EIGRP], BGPv4, and Intermediate System-to-Intermediate System version 4 [IS-ISv4]) are supported for load balancing and for constructing scalable LANs. IPv6 routing (using OSPFv3 and BGPv6) is supported in hardware for maximum performance. • Protocol-Independent Multicast (PIM) for IP multicast routing is supported, including PIM Sparse Mode (PIM SM), and Source-Specific Multicast (SSM). • IPv6 addressing is supported on interfaces with appropriate show commands for monitoring and troubleshooting. Audio Video Bridging Starting with Cisco IOS XE Software Release 16.8, the Cisco Catalyst 9300 Series supports the IEEE 802.1 AVB standard. This standard provided the means for highly reliable delivery of low-latency, time-synchronized audio and video streaming services through Layer 2 Ethernet networks. The standard also makes it easier to integrate new services and for AV equipment from different vendors to interoperate. Benefits • Improves quality of experience by lowering jitter and latency for time-synchronized delivery of high-quality AV. • Provides scalability of applications across networked deployments, including expansive and complex AV infrastructure. • Lowers total cost of ownership (TCO) with reduced cabling (lowers CapEx) and no license fees (lowers OpEx). For more details about AVB and specific models supported, see https://www.cisco.com/go/avb. Multigigabit Ethernet technology Cisco Multigigabit Ethernet technology allows you to achieve bandwidth speeds from 1 Gbps to 10 Gbps over traditional Category 5e/6 cabling or above. This technology addresses the need for exponential increases in bandwidth with the enormous growth of 802.11ac Wave 2, to be eclipsed by the growth of Wi-Fi 6 and new wireless applications without having to replace current cabling infrastructure.