C9300-48P vs 48U vs 48UXM vs 48UN vs 48H: One Letter, Four Times the Power

Written and maintained by Haink's network infrastructure team · Verified against Cisco data sheets, 22 August 2026 · authorized-channel, serial-verified

These five part numbers all describe a 48-port Catalyst 9300 access switch. They differ in two independent dimensions — how much power each port delivers, and how fast each port runs — and the suffix encodes both at once, which is why quotes for "48-port PoE Catalyst 9300" mean nothing until you read the letters.

The decision is not about which switch is best. It is about which two constraints bind at your site: what you are powering, and what speed the endpoints need.

The five at a glance

Add the 9300X for completeness: C9300X-48HX is UPOE+ at 90 W with multigigabit to 10G on all 48 ports — the only 48-port model in the family that gives both maximum power and 10G everywhere.

Dimension one: what are you powering?

This is the constraint that most often forces the choice, and the one that has changed recently.

The line that matters right now: a C9300-48P cannot run a Wi-Fi 7 access point at full specification. It will power one — the access point comes up and passes traffic — but the CW9176I drops to a 2.5G uplink instead of 10G and 2×2 instead of 4×4 on 2.4 GHz. Nothing alarms. You simply never get the performance you bought, and nobody notices until someone measures.

Since the Wi-Fi 6 access points went end-of-sale in 2026, this has become the most common reason a straightforward switch refresh needs re-specifying. The full analysis, including the switch power-budget arithmetic, is in the Wi-Fi 6 end-of-sale guide.

The budget is not the per-port figure times 48

Two traps in the budget column above.

First, the 48UN has a lower PoE budget than the 48U — 490 W against 822 W — despite both being UPOE. More of the silicon budget goes to the multigigabit PHYs. So the model with faster ports powers fewer devices at high draw.

Second, on the UPOE+ models the 90 W figure applies to a subset of ports. Cisco's specification is 802.3bt Type 4 on 21 ports, on both 24-port and 48-port models. A 48H is not forty-eight 90 W ports; it is up to twenty-one, with the rest drawing less. Across an eight-member stack Cisco quotes up to 384 ports of 90 W UPOE+, which is where the arithmetic works out.

Both figures assume the standard power supply. Second supplies and StackPower change the picture — StackPower shares power across up to four switches in a ring, or eight through an XPS-2200, and it is available on these models precisely because they have modular uplinks.

Dimension two: how fast do the ports need to be?

Here the naming is at its most misleading, because three suffixes contain multigigabit and mean three different things.

A site that needs 10G to twenty access points cannot use a 48UXM — it has twelve 10G ports — and cannot use a 48UN at all, which has none. That requires the 9300X HX, or two UXM switches with the fast ports carefully allocated.

Worth being honest about how often 10G to the access point is actually needed. A Wi-Fi 7 access point with a 10G uplink will not saturate it under realistic client load in most enterprise deployments. The 2.5G or 5G port is frequently sufficient, and the UN or UXM is then the economical answer. The case for HX is high-density environments — lecture halls, stadiums, trading floors — where aggregate airtime genuinely exceeds a few gigabits.

A cabling check belongs here too: 10G over copper needs Cat6 or Cat6A, and Cat5e caps at 5 Gbps. If the building is Cat5e, the 48UN's 5G ceiling is the cabling's ceiling anyway, and paying for 10G ports buys nothing until someone recables.

How to choose

Before ordering

1. Count what draws more than 30 W, not what might one day.
2. Check the total against the budget column, not against the per-port figure.
3. Count how many ports genuinely need 10G. If it is twelve or fewer, the UXM does it.
4. Check the cabling. Cat5e makes the 10G question academic.
5. Match the licence suffix — the -E or -A on the end has to align with the subscription.
6. Decide about StackPower, which needs the modular-uplink models rather than the 9300L.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between C9300-48U and C9300-48UXM?

Both are UPOE at 60 W. The 48U has gigabit ports; the 48UXM has multigigabit — 36 ports capped at 2.5G plus 12 reaching 10G. The 48U has the larger PoE budget at 822 W against 610 W.

What does UN mean on a C9300?

UPOE with 5G multigigabit on all 48 ports. No port on a 48UN reaches 10G, and its PoE budget is 490 W — lower than the gigabit 48U, because more of the power envelope goes to the multigigabit PHYs.

Which C9300 do I need for Wi-Fi 7 access points?

For the CW9171, 9172, 9174 and 9176, a UPOE model — U, UN or UXM. For the CW9178I, which draws about 95 W at full capability, a UPOE+ model: 48H or C9300X-48HX. A 48P at PoE+ will run any of them in a degraded state.

Can a C9300-48H really deliver 90 W on all 48 ports?

No. Cisco specifies IEEE 802.3bt Type 4 on 21 ports, on both the 24-port and 48-port models, with remaining ports at lower draw. Across an eight-member stack Cisco quotes up to 384 ports of 90 W UPOE+.

Is 10G to the access point worth paying for?

In high-density environments, yes. In a standard office, a Wi-Fi 7 access point rarely saturates 2.5G or 5G under real client load, so the UN or UXM is usually the economical choice — and if the building is cabled with Cat5e, 10G is not reachable anyway.

Do all these models support StackPower?

Yes — all the modular-uplink 9300 and 9300X models do. The Catalyst 9300L does not, because Cisco supports StackPower only on models with modular uplinks.

Related

• How to read a Cisco Catalyst part number — the full suffix table
• Catalyst 9200 versus 9300 — choosing the family first
• Wi-Fi 6 AP end-of-sale — the PoE arithmetic in full
• Catalyst 2960-X replacement · Cisco licensing explained
• Enterprise switches · Wireless access points · Cisco stock and lead times

Sources

• Cisco — Catalyst 9300 Series data sheet (model tables, PoE budgets, 802.3bt port counts)
• Cisco — Catalyst 9300 hardware installation guide
• Cisco — CW9176 deployment guide · CW9178I deployment guide (power requirements)
• Cisco — StackPower and XPS-2200