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Catalyst 3750-X and 3560-X Switch Software Configuration Guide
OL-21521-01
Chapter 1 Overview
Network Configuration Examples
Bandwidth alone is not the only consideration when designing your network. As your network traffic
profiles evolve, consider providing network services that can support applications for voice and data
integration, multimedia integration, application prioritization, and security. Table 1-2 describes some
network demands and how you can meet them.
Tab le 1-1 Increasing Network Performance
Network Demands Suggested Design Methods
Too many users on a single network
segment and a growing number of
users accessing the Internet
• Create smaller network segments so that fewer users share the bandwidth, and use
VLANs and IP subnets to place the network resources in the same logical network
as the users who access those resources most.
• Use full-duplex operation between the switch and its connected workstations.
• Increased power of new PCs,
workstations, and servers
• High bandwidth demand from
networked applications (such as
e-mail with large attached files)
and from bandwidth-intensive
applications (such as
multimedia)
• Connect global resources—such as servers and routers to which the network users
require equal access—directly to the high-speed switch ports so that they have
their own high-speed segment.
• Use the EtherChannel feature between the switch and its connected servers and
routers.
Tab le 1-2 Providing Network Services
Network Demands Suggested Design Methods
Efficient bandwidth usage for
multimedia applications and
guaranteed bandwidth for critical
applications
• Use IGMP snooping to efficiently forward multimedia and multicast traffic.
• Use other QoS mechanisms such as packet classification, marking, scheduling,
and congestion avoidance to classify traffic with the appropriate priority level,
thereby providing maximum flexibility and support for mission-critical, unicast,
and multicast, and multimedia applications.
• Use optional IP multicast routing to design networks better suited for multicast
traffic.
• Use MVR to continuously send multicast streams in a multicast VLAN but to
isolate the streams from subscriber VLANs for bandwidth and security reasons.
High demand on network redundancy
and availability to provide always on
mission-critical applications
• Use switch stacks, where all stack members are eligible stack masters in case of
stack-master failure. All stack members have synchronized copies of the saved
and running configuration files of the switch stack.
• Use cross-stack EtherChannels for providing redundant links across the switch
stack.
• Use Hot Standby Router Protocol (HSRP) for cluster command switch and router
redundancy.
• Use VLAN trunks, cross-stack UplinkFast, and BackboneFast for traffic-load
balancing on the uplink ports so that the uplink port with a lower relative port cost
is selected to carry the VLAN traffic.