Entry level backbone switch

[fred2k3]

Hi,

We're upgrading our comms cabinet, and are upgrading our old 10/100 switches with 7 Cisco Catalyst 2960X-48TS-L switches.

I want to get 2 backbone switches to connect these 7 Catalyst 2960X switches to, but I'm struggling to know where to start.  All I really want is a couple of stand-alone switches with a high throughput / decent backplane speeds to handle the access switches.  12 ports would sufficient if such a model exists, and I won't be stacking and of the switches.

• Any suggestions on what switch would fit the bill please?
• Also, is there somewhere you can compare the backplane speeds of different Cisco switches?

Thanks

[Julio E. Moisa]

Hi Fred,

You could consider Cisco 3850-12s-s model. It includes 12 SFP ports and expandible to 16 SFP ports.

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/switches/catalyst-3850-12s-s-switch/model.html

This link can also be useful: https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/assets/prod/switches/cisco-switch-selector-how-to/index.html

There was other model: Cisco 3750G-12 but it is EoL now.

Hope it is useful

🙂

[fred2k3]

Thank you Julio,

I have taken a look at these but I think they may be slightly overkill / out of budget for this project.  Our supplier has recommended the 3650 series, so I think we use a couple of those to host the servers and aggregate the remaining client switches (the 2960s).

Is there anywhere a table which compares all the different series of Cisco switches?  I feel there's so many and it gets really confusing, most of all because I don't understand the intended usage for them.

[Julio E. Moisa · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Yes you could consider Cisco 3650 with 24 ports but take in consideration you could have SFP port limitation to 4 or 8 depending of the model, the rest will be Ethernet ports, below you will find the table:

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/switches/catalyst-3650-series-switches/models-comparison.html

You could consider this model: WS-C3650-24TS

Hope it is useful

🙂