Can Cisco 2960G-48TC-L DRAM be Upgraded?

[mastrini1]

Greetings,

In trying to upgrade IOS on my 2960, I ran into some anomalies and after some research found the following documentation on Cisco's website:

From Release Notes for Catalyst 2960 Switches – for IOS Releases 12.2(50)SE and later

Hardware Requirements

DRAM required 512MB*

*We recommend 1 GB DRAM.

My 2960 currently has 65536K of memory.  So, I did a search to determine if I can add additional DRAM memory to my 2960, but haven't been able to find any specific answers.

Can the  2960G-48TC-L DRAM be upgrade and, if so, what is the specific part number to order and are there documented instructions on how to install the SIMM?

Thank you!

Marleen

[Peter Paluch]

Hi Marleen,

Those hardware requirements were indicated for a PC that would use the so-called device manager to configure and maintain the switches. The device manager is the web-based management interface bundled with IOSes for these platforms and extracted into their FLASH. Most certainly, the hardware requirements you have quoted were not indicated for the switch itself.

To my best knowledge, the Catalyst 2960 platform is a fixed-configuration platform, and its DRAM memory can not be upgraded - nor should that be necessary, as every IOS build for the 2960 should take its limited DRAM amount into account.

Best regards,
Peter

[mastrini1]

Thank you, Peter!

That makes sense now.  On the main download page, I see the Memory/DRAM requirements as 64/32...which I have.  I couldn't understand the Release Note information, but I had searched on DRAM and completely skipped over the definition of it being for the PC.

I've read that 12.2(55)SE8 appears to be the most stable for the 2960 so I'm going to proceed with that.  Please let me know if you know otherwise...

I greatly appreciate your prompt reply!

Marleen

[Peter Paluch]

Hi Marleen,

You are welcome!

I cannot tell from my personal experience but I have heard myself that the 12.2(55)SE8 ranks among the most stable versions so far. You could also test out the 12.2(55)SE10 that is currently downloadable - that one should only have bugfixes against the SE8, no new features.

Hopefully Leo Laohoo joins this thread and shares his experience - I take his word for everything switches as unconditionally trustworthy.

Best regards,
Peter