IP SLA on cisco catalyst switches

[Rene S.]

Hi, I'm pretty confused since I have read a lot of contradictory manuals.. we would like to buy a basic switch, which should support IP SLA so we can configure this:

http://www.firewall.cx/cisco-technical-knowledgebase/cisco-routers/813-cisco-router-ipsla-basic.html

In some manuals I've read that 2960 just support ip sla RECEIVER... but on some cisco websites it looks like they support full ip sla operations...

does anyone know if they're supporting it or not???

thanks

[Mark Malone · Accepted solution]

2960s lanbase license should suppport ip sla as mine do fine as below , lanlit prob wont support its pure l2

as well there are l3 2960s xr models that support l3

stack1#sh ip sla statistics

Round Trip Time (RTT) for       Index 99
Type of operation: icmp-echo
        Latest RTT: 103 ms
Latest operation start time: 10:56:29.025 UTC Wed Nov 25 2015
Latest operation return code: OK
Number of successes: 1
Number of failures: 0
Operation time to live: Forever

stack1#sh license
Index 1 Feature: lanlite
        Period left: 0  minute  0  second
Index 2 Feature: lanbase
        Period left: Life time
        License Type: Permanent
        License State: Active, In Use
        License Priority: Medium
        License Count: Non-Counted

[Rene S.]

thx, that's so strange since this manual says that 2960-s switches just support ip sla responder functionallity..

"Note The switch supports only IP SLAs responder functionality and must be configured with another device that supports full IP SLAs functionality. "

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/switches/lan/catalyst2960/software/release/12-2_55_se/configuration/guide/scg_2960/swipsla.html

And this table(table 7) from august 2015 says that only 3560 and 3750 switches support IP SLA..

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/switches/lan/catalyst3750/software/release/12-2_55_se/release/notes/OL23054.html

I'll talk to our reseller and ask for 2960s-xr models that support ip sla and ip routing..

[Mark Malone]

Yes thats a bit strange alright doc syaing that it works fione for us anyway

Just so your aware the XR models are stripped down l3 so you can have like eigrp stub and ospf with max 200 routes around but usually for access layer switches thats plenty

Q. What features does IP Lite bring to the 2960-XR switch models?

A. IP Lite introduced enterprise access Layer 3 features to the 2960-XR switch models. IP Lite is subset of IP Base features. Some of the IP Lite features are:

• Routing Information Protocol (RIP) v1 & v2

• Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) v2 & v3 stub

• Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP) stub

• Equal-cost routing

• Hot Standby Router Protocol (HSRP)

• Protocol Independent Multicast PIM (Sparse Mode, Dense Mode, Sparse Dense Mode, Source Specific Multicast) stub

• Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP) for IPv4

• Private VLAN

• IPv6 First Hop Security source guard

• Per-VLAN and per-port policers

[Rene S.]

Ok thanks. The switch (I would enable ip routing, so it would be a "router") should just be able to understand/perform this commands:

R1(config)# ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 2.2.2.2
R1(config)# ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 3.3.3.3 10

R1(config)# ip sla 1
R1(config)# icmp-echo 8.8.8.8 source-interface FastEthernet0/0
R1(config)# timeout 1000
R1(config)# threshold 2
R1(config)# frequency 3
R1(config)# ip sla schedule 1 life forever start-time now

R1(config)# track 1 ip sla 1 reachability

that's the most sophisticated thing it will do... no link state protocols or something else.. in the attached drawing you can see the infrastructure

[Mark Malone]

enabling ip routing is only required if theres intervlan routing going on that switch other than that the config above will work fine , you can add track to the end of the default route as well like ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 2.2.2.2 10 track 1

youl know quick enough if somethings not working with the show ip sla stat command

[Rene S.]

ok thanks, I will try it without enabling ip routing