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Catalyst 2950 and Catalyst 2955 Switch Software Configuration Guide
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Chapter 1 Overview
Features
• Hot Standby Router Protocol (HSRP) for command-switch redundancy. The redundant command
switches used for HSRP must have compatible software releases.
Note See the “Advantages of Using CMS and Clustering Switches” section on page 1-9. For the CMS,
software, and browser requirements and for the cluster hardware and software requirements,
refer to the Chapter 4, “Getting Started with CMS,” and the release notes.
Performance
• Autosensing of speed on the 10/100 and 10/100/1000 ports and autonegotiation of duplex mode on
the 10/100 ports for optimizing bandwidth
• IEEE 802.3x flow control on Gigabit Ethernet ports operating in full-duplex mode
• Fast EtherChannel and Gigabit EtherChannel for enhanced fault tolerance and for providing up
to 2 Gbps of bandwidth between switches, routers, and servers
• Support for frames larger than 1500 bytes. These switches support frame sizes from 1500 to
1530 bytes:
–
Catalyst 2950G-12-EI, 2950G-24-EI, 2950G-24-EI-DC, and 2950G-48-EI switches running
Cisco IOS Release 12.1(6)EA2 or later
–
Catalyst 2950 LRE switches
–
Catalyst 2955 switches
• Port blocking on forwarding unknown unicast and multicast traffic (available only on the
Catalyst LRE switches and on the Catalyst 2950G-12-EI, 2950G-24-EI, 2950G-24-EI-DC,
2950G-48-EI, and 2955 switches)
• Per-port broadcast storm control for preventing faulty end stations from degrading overall system
performance with broadcast storms
• Port Aggregation Protocol (PAgP) and Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) for automatic
creation of EtherChannel links
• Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) snooping for IGMP versions 1, 2, and 3 to limit
flooding of IP multicast traffic
• IGMP report suppression for sending only one IGMP report per multicast router query to the
multicast devices (supported only for IGMPv1 or IGMPv2 queries)
• Multicast VLAN registration (MVR) to continuously send multicast streams in a multicast VLAN
while isolating the streams from subscriber VLANs for bandwidth and security reasons
• IGMP filtering for controlling the set of multicast groups to which hosts on a switch port can belong
• IGMP throttling for configuring the action when the maximum number of entries is in the IGMP
forwarding table
• Protected port (private VLAN edge port) option for restricting the forwarding of traffic to designated
ports on the same switch
• Dynamic address learning for enhanced security
Manageability
• Cisco Intelligence Engine 2100 (IE2100) Series Cisco Networking Services (CNS) embedded
agents for automating switch management, configuration storage and delivery (available only with
the EI)
• DHCP-based autoconfiguration for automatically configuring the switch during startup with IP
address information and a configuration file that it receives during DHCP-based autoconfiguration
