SWITCH CISCO

Layer 2 switching

Spanning Tree Protocol (STP)

Standard 802.1d spanning tree support

Fast convergence using 802.1w (Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol [RSTP]), enabled by default

Multiple spanning tree instances using 802.1s (MSTP); 8 instances are supported

Port grouping/link aggregation

Support for IEEE 802.3ad Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP)

VLAN

Support for up to 256 active VLANs simultaneously

Port-based and 802.1Q tag-based VLANs

Management VLAN

Guest VLAN

Voice VLAN

Voice traffic is automatically assigned to a voice-specific VLAN and treated with appropriate levels of QoS. Auto voice capabilities deliver networkwide zero-touch deployment of voice endpoints and call control devices

Generic VLAN Registration Protocol (GVRP)and Generic Attribute Registration Protocol (GARP)

Protocols for automatically propagating and configuring VLANs in a bridged domain

IGMP (versions 1, 2, and 3) snooping

Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) limits bandwidth-intensive multicast traffic to only the requesters; supports 4K multicast groups (source-specific multicasting is also supported)

IGMP querier

Used to support a Layer 2 multicast domain of snooping switches in the absence of a multicast router

HOL blocking

Head-Of-Line (HOL) blocking

Loopback detection

Provides protection against loops by transmitting loop protocol packets out of ports on which loop protection has been enabled. It operates independently of STP

Layer 3 routing

IPv4 routing

Wire-speed routing of IPv4 packets


Up to 32 static routes and up to 16 IP interfaces

IPv6 routing

Wire-speed routing of IPv6 packets

Layer 3 interface

Configuration of Layer 3 interface on physical port, LAG, VLAN interface, or loopback interface

Classless Interdomain Routing (CIDR)

Support for CIDR

DHCP relay at Layer 3

Relay of DHCP traffic across IP domains

User Datagram Protocol (UDP) relay

Relay of broadcast information across Layer 3 domains for application discovery or relaying of bootP/DHCP packets

Security

SSL

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encrypts all HTTPS traffic, allowing secure access to the browser-based management GUI in the switch

Secure Shell (SSH) Protocol

SSH is a secure replacement for Telnet traffic. Secure Copy (SCP) also uses SSH. SSH v1 and v2 are supported

IEEE 802.1X (authenticator role)

RADIUS authentication, guest VLAN, single/multiple host mode, and single/multiple sessions

Secure Core Technology (SCT)

Ensures that the switch will receive and process management and protocol traffic no matter how much traffic is received

Secure Sensitive Data (SSD)

A mechanism to manage sensitive data (such as passwords, keys, and so on) securely on the switch, populating this data to other devices, and secure autoconfig. Access to view the sensitive data as plaintext or encrypted is provided according to the user-configured access level and the access method of the user

Port security

Ability to lock source MAC addresses to ports and limit the number of learned MAC addresses

RADIUS

Supports RADIUS authentication for management access. Switch functions as a client

Storm control

Broadcast, multicast, and unknown unicast

DoS prevention

Denial-of-Service (DoS) attack prevention

Access Control Lists (ACLs)

Support for up to 512 rules

Drop or rate limit based on source and destination MAC, VLAN ID or IP address, protocol, port, differentiated services code point (DSCP)/IP precedence, TCP/UDP source and destination ports, 802.1p priority, Ethernet type, Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) packets, IGMP packets, TCP flag

STP loopback guard

Provides additional protection against Layer 2 forwarding loops (STP loops)

Quality of service

Priority levels

8 hardware queues

Scheduling

Strict priority and Weighted Round-Robin (WRR) queue assignment based on DSCP and class of service (802.1p/CoS)

Class of service

Port based; 802.1p VLAN priority based; IPv4/v6 IP precedence/Type of Service (ToS)/DSCP based; Differentiated Services (DiffServ); classification and re-marking ACLs, trusted QoS

Rate limiting

Ingress policer; egress shaping and rate control; per VLAN, per port, and flow based

Congestion avoidance

A TCP congestion avoidance algorithm is required to reduce and prevent global TCP loss synchronization