Cisco 300 series switches

[pimpcatccna]

Hi guys

I have recently started at a new small business who's network administrators have installed four netgear unmanaged switches. they also seem to have added lots of small netgear 8 port unmanaged switches whenever they have run out of cable. im currently looking at a network redesign as the company may choose to make the transition to voice in the next year. I also want to split the network into vlans for security and performance reasons. to undertake this I would usually purchase Cisco 3560,2960 Poe equipment if they were a large business but I was tempted by the 300 series switches.

what would like to know really is how much difference there is between a 3560 and a 300 series for a network that would run voice, vlans, and intervlan routing. I say this because after reading the documentation from Cisco it is unclear to the exact capabilities of the switch. I would also like to know if anyone has use the IOS instead of the web browser and how much difference there is to a enterprise series switch.

Any info would be much appreciated as I only have knowledge of products that the certifications use.

Regards P Lawrence

[Shashank Singh]

Hi,

Cisco 300 series switches are small business switches which have 8 ports supporting basic features (all of what you mentioned). On the contrary, 3560 switches are enterprise switches which can support L3 routing protocols apart from the regular switching features.

The Cisco Catalyst 3560 is available with one of two software images:

• IP Base software includes advanced quality of service (QoS), rate limiting, access control lists (ACLs), Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) for routed access, and IPv6 functionality.
• IP Services software provides a broader set of enterprise-class features, including advanced hardware-based IP Unicast and IP Multicast routing, as well as policy-based routing (PBR).

3560  offers a better granularity of configuration wrt 300 switches. Its switching fabric has a much higher bandwidth and can handle much more data than the 300 series switch.

2960 is the lowest end model available in enterprise class switches. The only advantage 2960 has over 3560 is that it is stackable. You can stack multiple 2960 switches into one virtual switch.

Both 2960 and 3560 are available in different models, number of ports and IOS license (IP Base, IP Services etc) which lets you pay only for the features you want to use on the switch.

If you do not need all these features in your network, traffic is not expected to be very high, and there are little chances of a need for more ports in future, 300 series switches will serve the purpose.

Hope this helps,

Shashank

Please rate if this helped answer your question.

[Latchum Naidu]

Hi,

The Cisco 300 Series, part of the Cisco Small Business line of network solutions
Please see the below data sheet for more information
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/switches/ps5718/ps10898/data_sheet_c78-610061.html

And the Cisco Catalyst 3560 is part of a larger and more scalable family of Cisco Catalyst switches.
It have features like POE, Gigabit Ethernet, Enhanced security and Advanced QoS
Please seee the below data sheet for more information.
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/switches/ps5718/ps5528/product_data_sheet09186a00801f3d7d.html

Hope this helps you.
Please rate the helpfull posts.

Regards,
Naidu.

[pimpcatccna]

Thanks Shashank

I knew what the main difference's between the enterprise series switches we i just wondered if the 300 series are a cut down version of a enterprise switch. The only reason i ask this is due to them being recommended by resellers for small businesses. i personally would always use the enterprise products as they are completely configurable however costs do come into it.

I just wanted to know if you could only trunk to other switches using uplink ports, routing from the main switch to the router (static route), switch QoS is good enough to deal with voice and video traffic. this could be 20 phones at any one time ETC

the reasons for asking like i said is that i am used to enterpries products

Regards P Lawrence

[Shashank Singh · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Yes the uplink on the 300 series switch can be used as a trunk to another switch, and the switch can definitely handle 20 phones at any time. Higher end models in 300 series have a decent switching capacity. Make sure you select the correct model depending on how much traffic you have and ports you need.

Data sheet is available at http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/switches/ps5718/ps10898/data_sheet_c78-610061.pdf

Cheers,

Shashank

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