A few of the highlights of the release:
Cisco Discover Protocol (CDP): automatically detects all the devices connected in the network and instructs the devices to use appropriate voice VLAN or QoS parameters.
Cisco Auto Smartports: Based on pre-tested configuration, Smartports auto configures ports with specific levels of Security, QoS, and availability according to the type of connected device.
Cisco Textview: Text-based configuration for those who prefer command line interface (CLI) management. The CLI is full featured (the entire device can be configured solely through the CLI if so desired), and comes with multiple user privilege levels, delivering differing access depending on the user’s authorization level. A menu-based CLI is also present in this release.
Q-in-Q: Allows VLANs to transparently cross a service provider network while isolating traffic among customers.
BPDU Guard: A security mechanism to protect the network from invalid configurations. A port enabled for BPDU Guard is shut down if a BPDU message is received on that port
Secure Core Technology (SCT): Ensures that the switch will receive and process management and protocol traffic no matter how much traffic is received
This release offers several key capabilities in the area of automating voice deployments:
- Automatic Voice VLAN creation and propagation to multiple switches in the network
- Synchronization of Voice VLAN and QoS parameters with IP Phones and Voice Platforms such as UC3xx/UC5xx
- Automatic configuration of switch ports based on the dynamically discovered devices – Access Points, IP phones, Switches, UC platforms, etc
- Automatically sets the security levels appropriately for the discovered devices using Auto Smartports
- Uses a combination of CDP, LLDP-MED, Auto Smartports, and intelligent software from Cisco to accomplish all of this with no user intervention
- Combines with the POE functionality already available across multiple switch models to make voice and video deployments as flexible and cost-effective as possible
