2960g and bgp

[omar.armas]

Hi, I have a switch cisco 2960G with some vlans configured, all is ok, now I need to receive an additional link with BGP4 and receive a C class ip pool.

I have always used a dedicated router to receive BGP4, but have never used a switch to do it. My doubts are:

-Is the switch able to do it without problems? (we graph cpu usage, it's low for the moment)
-Is it recommended or a common practice?
-If I add the port in a production service, won't it affect the default route?

Regards,

Omar

[Peter Paluch · Accepted solution]

Omar,

To my best knowledge, Catalyst 2960G have no support for any dynamic routing protocol. There is no way of running BGP on a Catalyst 2960G (check for yourself - there should be no router bgp command available).

For a switch to support BGP, you would need to look for multilayer switch types, such as 3560, 3650, 3750 or 3850. Running BGP on these switches is possible but at the same time, they are not suited to receive the full BGP table. Receiving a handful of BGP prefixes is fine (in terms of tens or hundreds of prefixes) but anything beyond that would strain their RAM and CPU.

Best regards,
Peter

[omar.armas]

Thanks, Peter, that's what I thought but wanted to confirm. I'll continue using routers for cases like these.