Best practice on switches.

[Chris McCann]

All,

I am looking for best practices for installing switches. In my case 2960x

I know that vlan 1 should be disabled/spanning-tree bpduguard/unused ports disabled, but I am looking for a comprehensive list of items that should be done. I have a few already but wondered if there is a cisco post/white paper effectively listing services etc that should be disabled.

Also I would expect that such a list would be undated every few months, is there a cisco 'alert' email that anyone is aware of, which sends out the latest updates.

any help appreciated.

[acampbell]

Chris,

This is the best I can find - it does not update very often - still very relevant for all kinds of switches.

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/switches/catalyst-6800-series-switches/guide-c07-733457.html

Regards

Alex

[devils_advocate]

The term 'Best Practice' can often be a subjective thing.

It often depends on the equipment you have and the features it supports.

An example would be Port Security.

Engineers often says its 'best practice' to use it for security reasons but plenty of networks don't.

If you have a lot of devices moving about, it may not be very functional to use it.

Personally I use 'best practice' advice from a security perspective but only if it doesn't cause a management burden.