Cisco 2950 User Manual

Cisco Catalyst 2950 Series

Fast Ethernet Desktop Switches

DATA SHEET

Overview

The Cisco Catalyst® 2950 Series of ﬁxed conﬁguration, wire-speed Fast Ethernet desktop switches delivers premium performance and functionality for local-area networks (LANs). These standalone, 10/100 autosensing switches provide enhanced quality of service (QoS) and multicast management features—managed with the easy-to-use, Web-based Cisco Cluster Management

Suite (CMS) and integrated Cisco IOS The Catalyst 2950 Gigabit-over-copper version with 10/100/1000BaseT uplinks offers medium-sized businesses andenterprise branchofﬁces with an ideal solution to migrate from Fast Ethernet to a higher-performance Gigabit Ethernet backbone using existing Category 5 copper cabling.

The Catalyst 2950 Series consists of the Catalyst 2950T-24, 2950-24, 2950-12, and 2950C-24 switches. The Catalyst 2950-24 Switch provides 24 10/100 ports; the 2950-12 has 12 10/100 ports; the 2950T-24 has 24 10/100 ports with 2 ﬁxed 10/100/1000BaseT uplink ports; and the 2950C-24 has 24 10/100 ports with2 ﬁxed 100BaseFXuplinkports. Each switchhas a one rack-unit (RU) form factor, making them very ﬂexible to deploy, either on a desktop ormounted ina wiring closet (Figure 1).

Software.

Figure 1 Catalyst 2950 Series 10/100/1000 Switches

Wire-Speed Performance in Connecting End-Stations to the LAN

With a switching fabric of 8.8 Gigabits per second (Gbps) and a maximum forwarding bandwidth of 4.4 Gbps, the Catalyst 2950 switches deliver wire-speed performance on all ports in connecting end-stations and users to the company LAN.

Catalyst 2950 switchessupport performance boosting

features such as Fast EtherChannel EtherChannel technology, offering up to 4-Gbps of high-performance bandwidth between Catalyst switches, routers, and servers.

and Gigabit

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Migrate to Gigabit Speeds in the LAN

Midmarket customers who have e xisting copper (Category 5, UTP) wiring infrastructure in their buildings no w have a truly compellingsolution tomigrate to Gigabitspeeds in theirLANs. The Catalyst 2950T-24 deliv ers tw o fixed 10/100/1000BaseT (Gigabit-Ethernet-over-copper) uplink ports in addition to 24 10/100 ports for desktop connectivity. For a fractional increment in price per port, midsized businesses can now upgrade their LANs to higher-performance Gigabit Ethernet.

Multicast Management via IGMP Snooping

The Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) Snooping feature allows the switch to “listen in” on the IGMP conversation between hosts and routers. When a switch hears an IGMPjoin request froma host for a givenmulticast group, the switch adds the host’s port number to the Group Destination Address (GDA) list for that group. And,when the switch hears an IGMP leaverequest, it removesthe host’sport from the Content Addressable Memory (CAM) table entry.

In conjunction with the new Catalyst 3550-12T multilayer Gigabit Ethernet switch,the Catalyst 2950T-24switch provides an integrated Gigabit-Ethernet-over-copper solution for midmarket customers who have outgrown their Fast Ethernet backbones.

Sophisticated Quality of Service

The Catalyst 2950 Series delivers sophisticated LAN-edge QoS, unmatched inits category ofproducts in theindustry.All Catalyst 2950switches support two modes of reclassiﬁcation. One mode—based on the IEEE 802.1p standard—honors the class-of-service (CoS) value at the ingress point and assigns the packet to the appropriate queue. In the second mode, packets can be reclassiﬁed based on a default CoS value assigned to the ingress port by the network administrator. In the case of frames that arrive without a CoS value (such as untagged frames), Catalyst 2950 switches support classiﬁcation based on a default CoS value per port assigned by the network administrator.

Once theframes havebeen classiﬁed or reclassiﬁed usingone of the abovemodes,they are assignedto the appropriatequeue at the egress. Catalyst 2950 switches support four egress queues, which allow the network administrator to be more discriminating and granular in assigning priorities for the various applications on the LAN trafﬁc. Strict Priority Scheduling conﬁguration ensures time-sensitive applications such as voice, always follow an expedited path through the switch fabric. Weighted Round Robin (WRR) scheduling, another signiﬁcant enhancement, ensures that lower-priority trafﬁc receives attention without comprising the priority settings administered by a network manager.

By supporting IGMP Snooping in hardware andconﬁguration of IGMP Snooping via the Cisco Cluster Management Suite, Catalyst 2950 switches deliver outstanding performance and ease of use in administering and managing multicast applications on the LAN.

Cisco Cluster Management Suite

The Cisco Cluster Management Suite (CMS) is Web-based software that is embedded in Catalyst 2950, 3550-12T, 3500 XL, 2900 XL, and 1900 switches. Through Cisco Switch Clustering technology, users access CMS with any standard Web browser to manage up to 16 interconnected Catalyst 2950, 3550-12T, 3500 XL, 2900 XL, and 1900 switches at once—regardless of their geographic proximity—using a single-IP address. CMS provides an integrated management interface for all Cisco IOS functionality, ﬁrmware management, and offers administrators a powerful graphical user interface (GUI) tool to easily monitor and manage their LANs.

CMS supports a broad range of standards-based connectivity options and conﬁgurations to deliver levels of performance that are scalable to meet customer requirements. Switch Cluster connectivity options for Catalyst 2950 switches include Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, Fast EtherChannel, Gigabit Ethernet (1000BaseT), and Gigabit EtherChannel connectivity. Because the technology is not limited by proprietary stacking modules or stacking cables, CMS expands the traditional cluster domain beyond a single wiring closet and lets users mix and match interconnections to meet speciﬁc management, performance, and cost requirements.

These features allow network administrators to prioritize mission-critical, time-sensitive trafﬁc, such as ERP (Oracle, SAP, and so on), voice (IP telephony trafﬁc), and CAD/CAM over less time-sensitive applications such as FTP or e-mail (SMTP).

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Catalyst 2950 switches can be conﬁgured either as command or member switches in a Cisco switch cluster. The command switch serves as the single-IP address management point and disbursesall managementinstructionsdictated bythe network administrator. Command switches can cluster up to 15 additional interconnected member switches regardless of interconnection media. CMS also allows the network administrator to designate a standby or redundant command switch, which takes thecommander dutiesshould the primary command switch fail.

Enhanced Security, Management, and Integrated Cisco IOS Features

Cisco Catalyst 2950 Series switches have several exceptional features toincrease network performance, manageability,and security. Network managers can implement higher levels of data security and boost LAN performance by deploying up to 64 virtual LANs (VLANs) per switch. This ensures that data packets are forwarded only to stations within a speciﬁc VLAN, creating a virtual ﬁrewall between groups of ports on the network and reducing broadcast transmission. VLAN trunks can be created from any port using the standards-based 802.1Q VLAN trunking architecture. Per VLAN Spanning Tree (PVST+) allows users to implement redundant uplinks while also distributing trafﬁc loads across multiple links. This is not possible with standard Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) implementations. Cisco Uplink Fast technology ensures immediate transfer to the secondary uplink, much better than the traditional 30 to 60 second convergence time. Thisis yetanother enhancement ofthe STP implementation.

With Catalyst 2950 switches, network managers can implement high levels of port and console security. Media Access control (MAC) address-based port level security prevents unauthorized stations from accessing the switch. Static and dynamic address limits can be created, giving administrators powerful control over network access. Multilevel access security on the switch console prevents unauthorized users from accessing or altering switch conﬁguration. Terminal access controller access control system (TACACS+) authentication enables centralized coordination of access control across a large group of networking devices.

Features And Key Benefits

Exceptional Performance

• Wire-speed, nonblocking performance on all ports, including Gigabit ports

• 8.8-Gbps switching fabric and 6.6 million packets-per-second maximum forwarding rate ensures maximum throughput—even for the most performance-sensitive applications

• 12- or 24- 10BaseT/100BaseTX autosensing ports, each delivering up to 200 Mbps of bandwidth to individual users, servers or workgroups to support bandwidth-intensive applications

• Catalyst 2950T-24 has two built-in, Gigabit Ethernet (1000BaseT) ports that deliver up to 4 Gbps aggregated bandwidth to the Gigabit Ethernet backbone, Gigabit Ethernetservers or between switches—leveragingexisting Category 5 cabling infrastructure—up to a distance of 100 meters

• Catalyst 2950C-24 switch has two multimode (100BaseFX) ﬁber uplinks deliver up to 200 Mbps of bandwidth over an extended distance of up to 2 kilometers

• 8 MB shared memory architecture ensures the highest possible throughput with a design that eliminates head-of-line blocking, minimizes packet loss,and delivers better overall performancein environments with extensive multicast and broadcast trafﬁc

• 16 MB of DRAM and 8 MB of Flash on-board enable the addition of future feature upgrades, maximizing customer investments

• Bandwidth aggregation through Fast EtherChannel and GigabitEtherChannel technologyenhancesfault tolerance and offersup to 4Gbps of aggregatedbandwidth between switches, to routers and to individual servers

• 802.1Q standards-based VLAN trunking on each port; 64 VLANs per switch with 64 instances of Spanning Tree (PVST+)

• Superior multicast management via support for IGMP snooping in hardware

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