ASIC of C2960

[etxlews-SE]

Hi,

Speaking about IGMP snooping performance, is the ASIC/CAM of C2960 Layer 3 aware?

Best ones Leo

[Edison Ortiz]

To a certain extend, yes. You can implement L3 ACLs and DHCP Snooping, for instance.

However, you can't route nor use the switch as a gateway to another subnet.

HTH,

__

Edison.

[etxlews-SE]

I was thinking about ASIC performance when using IGMP snooping v1/2: is the ASIC of C2960 handling multicast traffic in a Layer 3 manner?

Maybe I need a C3560 to maintain throughput.

Thanks,

Leo

[Edison Ortiz]

The ASIC in the 2960 handles IGMP Snooping just fine.

If you have the source and destination multicast traffic in the same Vlan, IGMP snooping will only send traffic to ports wanting this traffic, that's all done Layer2.

If the source and destination multicast traffic reside on different Vlans, then the Layer3 device separating the Vlans may affect the performance, but not on IGMP snooping but multicast routing.

Please see the documentation:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/switches/lan/catalyst2960/software/release/12.2_40_se/configuration/guide/swigmp.html

If you have a 3560, the multicast routing 'may be' Layer3 switched which is faster than using an external router connecting to a 2960.

HTH,

__

Edison.