Cisco → Good replacement switch

Hi group,

I've been very happy over the years with the Cisco 3560G switch. It's been a work horse for our company both in house and deployed to small customers. We have some deployed using layer 3 and many deployed with POE in multi vlan voice environments.

As with all things, I think its time to say goodbye finally to this model. I'm looking for a good replacement, something with poe and layer3 capability. The 2960X looks promising. I can't find any data about performance but I do know the 3560G had a layer 2 performance of 38.7 million Mpps.

Looking to hear your thoughts on the models, they don't have to be new models, 1 gen old is ok too.

I'll bite... what's the (specific) reason you're tossing your existing 3560G? Is it because it's
EOL / no longer supported? Or is it because it can't grow with your needs? Or something else?

Also, when you say 'layer 3,' what exactly are you expecting? Taking a look at the 2960X, IP LITE
indicates "basic layer 3 feature set," which I take to mean static routes at most. Full layer 3
functionality -- ie. RIP, OSPF, BGP -- is found only in the 356x / 375x / 385x switches.

Regards

Yes, because EOL. I need to be able to sell them to customers new.

Yes, static routes on the layer 3.

If you

a) only need static routes

b) have no need of other fancy layer 2 / 3 features

c) have light user and voip traffic / utilization patterns

then 29xx is where it's at. I don't have any direct experience with the latest gen 29xxs,
but I don't have anything bad to say about the preceding 2950s and 2960 generation switches,
when they're used for their intended place in the network -- ie. please DO NOT use them for
"core" / 24x7x365 high bandwidth (server-)connecting / data-pumping duties.

Crazy question, tomkb , but any sort of baseline / existing traffic patterns
available from your customer(s) you're selling to? Just from a CYA perspective?

My 00000010bits

Regards

For the most part, the intended use of this switch would be for internal voice-over-ip usage as an access switch. I did use the 3560G as an external router with full hsrp redundancy and that has worked very well but I don't have any performance data to compare L3 capabilities. One thing I will have to check into is how many ports can have POE at one time. It used to be only 24 of 48 could be lit up on some models.

Don't know whether the 29xx can do allswitchport POE either, offhand. EDIT : 2960x datasheet here, Table 6 specifies the # of ports that can be powered to 802.3at and 802.3af stds simultaneously, along with available POE wattage.

Either case, to CYA, I'd get both the above requirements / details from the client(s) in question first.

Regards

As Hellfire has said the 2960S or X is where it's at as long as you don't need routing protocols.
Be careful of the part numbers. On a 48 port switch, if you want standard 802.3AF PoE on all the ports the part number will end with FPS-L. If you get a 48 port switch with a part number that ends in LPS-L then you have a switch that can only provide power to 24 ports. It can be any 24 ports, but there is a power budget to worry about.
2960's with only 24 ports have 802.3AF PoE available on all ports.

For what it's worth I use these all the time as "LAN Routers" and only forward internet traffic off to the default-gateway router to take the pressure off the ISR's processor as much as possible. I also let the switch handle DHCP Server duties as well.

I notice there is POE and POE+

Also is appears that some models might not have POE at all.
»www.cisco.com/c/en/us/pr ··· son.html

Yup. there is a choice of PoE and non PoE models. The P in the part number tells you it has power.
PoE+ is not something I have ever used so I have no experience of it. The data sheets are plenty good enough though. They can be a bit long winded sometimes but usually everything you need from a design / specification perspective will be in there somewhere.

To the best of my knowledge, POE / 802.3af's good enough for typical Cisco IP phones @ 15.4W. POE+ / 802.3at provides more juice @ 30W for
devices that draw more power.

Offhand, can't say that I know of any 802.3at equipment either.

Regards

True. Some of the voip phones I've been deploying are only 5 watts.

I have several deployments running 30+ Cisco AP's and 30+ Cisco IP colour screen phones (on separate switches natch) without issue.

Some of the new Cisco APs (37xx) we just deployed go over 15.4W for all radios and modules chugging.

More often, PTZ IP Video cameras with IR LEDs and heaters push the current draw up for 802.3at stuff.

Ah, good to know KA0OUV , thanks for sharing.

Regards