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Catalyst 2950 Desktop Switch Software Configuration Guide
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Chapter 1 Overview Features
•Switch clus teri n g te chnol ogy u sed with CM S for
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Unified configuration, monitoring, authentication, and software upgrade of multiple switches
(refer to the release notes for a list of eligible cluster members).
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Automatic discovery of candidate switches and creation of clusters of up to 16 switches that can
be man aged thr oug h a s ingl e IP ad dress.
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Extended discovery of cluster candidates that are not directly connected to the command switch.
•Hot Sta ndby Rout er Pr otoc ol ( H SRP) for c omma nd-sw itch re du ndancy. The red und ant comm an d
switche s u sed f or HSRP m ust have compat ibl e so ft ware rel ease s.
Note See the “Advantages of Using CMS and Clustering Switches” section on page 1-7. Refer to the
release no tes fo r th e CMS , cluste r hardwa re, sof twar e, and br owser req uire men ts.
Performance
•Autosensing of speed on the 10/ 100 and 10/100/1000 ports a nd autonegotiation of duplex mode on
the 10 /100 port s f or op tim izing ba ndwid th
•IEEE 8 02. 3X f low contr ol o n G iga bit E th erne t po rts o pe rat ing in fu ll- dup lex mo de
•Fast EtherChan nel and Gigabit Ethe rChann el for enh anced fault to lerance and for providi ng up
to 2 Gbps of bandwidth between switches, routers, and servers
•Suppor t for frames larg er than 1500 byt es. The Catal yst 29 50G-12-EI, 295 0G-24-EI, 295 0G-24-EI -DC,
and 2950G-48-EI switches running Cisco IOS Release 12.1(6)EA2 or later support frame sizes from
1500 to 1530 bytes
•Per-port broadc ast storm contr ol for preventing faulty end stati ons from degradin g overall syst em
performance with broadcast storms
•Port Aggregatio n Protocol (PAgP) for auto matic cr eation of E therCha nnel link s
•Intern et Group Ma nagement Protocol (IGM P) snooping supp ort to lim it flooding of IP mu lticast
traffic
•Multicast VLAN registration (MVR) to continuously send multicast streams in a multicast VLAN
while isolating the str eams from subscriber VL ANs for bandwidth and security reasons
•IGMP f ilte ring for con trolling the se t of mu lticast grou ps to which hosts on a swit ch port ca n belong
•Protected port (private VLAN edge port) option for restricting the f orwarding of traffic to
designat ed ports on the same switch
•Dynamic a ddre ss le ar ning fo r enha nce d secu rit y
Manageability
•Cisco Inte lligence Engine 2100 (IE 2100) Seri es Cisco Network ing Servi ces (CNS) em bedded
agent s for autom ating switc h ma nage ment , con figurati on stor age a nd del ivery (available only with
the EI)
•Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)-based autoconfiguration for automatically
configuring th e switch dur ing star tup with IP ad dress info rmati on and a co nfiguration file that it
receives during DH CP-b ased au toc onfigurati on
Note DHCP replaces the Bootstrap Protocol (BOOTP) feature autoconfiguration to ensure retriev al of
configuration files by unicast TFTP messages. BOOTP is available in earlier software releases
for th is sw itch.