Catalyst 5505 question

[alucky8ball]

Hi,

I am looking for a solution that will support about 70 ports and will allow vlans among all of these ports. I have found a nice catalyst 5505 for a reasonable price, and was wondering if all the switch modules in it acted as 1 module, or if they had to be trunked between all of them. Also, seing as though I have never used a 5505 before, what is the purpose of the supervisor engine??

Does anyone know if the 5505 is right for what I am trying to do?

[Kevin Dorrell]

The Cat 5505 should do what you want to do OK. The Supervisor module is essential, as that is where all the intelligence sits, as well as configuration management, code image, etc. All the modules are connected to each other and to the supervisor via the backplane, so they act together as a single switch.

There are various options, but beware that in its simplest form this chassis is a layer-2 switch - it cannot do layer-3 routing. But what you can do is to define a trunk to a router for your inter-VLAN routing; this is known as "router-on-a-stick". There is also an routing module you can add, but that depends on the which supervisor you are using.

You can explore the Cat 5000 series starting from here:

http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/lan/cat5000/index.htm

Does that help?

Kevin Dorrell

Luxembourg

[alucky8ball]

The one I am currently looking at getting includes the following...

1 x Supervisor Engine III Card (WS-X5530), also come with 16Mbytes Flast Memory Card

1 x Card with 2 pair port 100Base FX Fast Ethernet Channel ( WS-U5533-FEFX-MMF)

4 x Card with 24 ports 10/100Base TX

Is this still a layer 2 switch even though it has the supervisor engine III card?

[amit-singh]

yes, this is still a layer 2. You need a RSM ( route switch module ) for layer 3 routing. 5505 is a 5 slot Chassis so you can use only 4 cards except Sup engine. So your Sup goes into first slot and you are left with 4 vacant slots only.

HTH,

-amit singh

[glen.grant]

Also be aware that the 5500 is just about end of life and any software support and or security fixes ends in May 2006 . Any security problems they find after that you will be on your own as they will not do any more software bug fixes after that .