Cisco Catalys 3560 Series

Cisco Catalys 3560 Series is a line of fixed-configuration, enterprise-class switches that include IEEE 802.3af and Cisco prestandard Power over Ethernet (PoE) functionality in Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet configurations. The Cisco Catalyst 3560 is an ideal access layer switch for small enterprise LAN access or branch-office environments, combining both 10/100/1000 and PoE configurations for maximum productivity and investment protection while enabling the deployment of new applications such as IP telephony, wireless access, video surveillance, building management systems, and remote video kiosks. Customers can deploy networkwide intelligent services-such as advanced quality of service (QoS), rate limiting, access control lists (ACLs), multicast management, and high-performance IP routing-while maintaining the simplicity of traditional LAN switching. Available for the Cisco Catalyst 3560 Series at no charge, the Cisco Network Assistant is a centralized management application that simplifies the administration tasks for Cisco switches, routers, and wireless access points. Cisco Network Assistant provides configuration wizards that greatly simplify the implementation of converged networks and intelligent network services.

The Cisco Catalyst 3560 is part of a larger and more scalable family of Cisco Catalyst switches that includes the Cisco Catalyst 3560-E Series switches, the Cisco Catalyst 3750 and 3750-E Series switches with Cisco StackWise^™ technology, and the Cisco Catalyst 4500 and Catalyst 6500 modular switches. United by Cisco IOS^® Software, the entire family offers industry-leading availability, integrated security, optimized delivery, and manageability.

Configurations

The Cisco Catalyst 3560 Series comprises the following switches (refer to Figure 1):

Figure 1.     Cisco Catalyst 3560 Switches

●   Cisco Catalyst 3560-8PC: 8 Ethernet 10/100 ports with PoE and 1 dual-purpose 10/100/1000 and SFP port; compact form factor with no fan

●   Cisco Catalyst 3560-12PC: 12 Ethernet 10/100 ports with PoE and 1 dual-purpose 10/100/1000 and SFP port; compact form factor with no fan

●   Cisco Catalyst 3560-24TS: 24 Ethernet 10/100 ports and 2 Small Form-Factor Pluggable (SFP)-based Gigabit Ethernet ports; 1 rack unit (RU)

●   Cisco Catalyst 3560-48TS: 48 Ethernet 10/100 ports and 4 SFP-based Gigabit Ethernet ports; 1RU

●   Cisco Catalyst 3560-24PS: 24 Ethernet 10/100 ports with PoE and 2 SFP-based Gigabit Ethernet ports; 1 RU

●   Cisco Catalyst 3560-48PS: 48 Ethernet 10/100 ports with PoE and 4 SFP-based Gigabit Ethernet ports; 1RU

●   Cisco Catalyst 3560G-24TS: 24 Ethernet 10/100/1000 ports and 4 SFP-based Gigabit Ethernet ports; 1RU

●   Cisco Catalyst 3560G-48TS: 48 Ethernet 10/100/1000 ports and 4 SFP-based Gigabit Ethernet ports; 1RU

●   Cisco Catalyst 3560G-24PS: 24 Ethernet 10/100/1000 ports with PoE and 4 SFP-based Gigabit Ethernet ports; 1RU

●   Cisco Catalyst 3560G-48PS: 48 Ethernet 10/100/1000 ports with PoE and 4 SFP-based Gigabit Ethernet ports; 1RU

The Cisco Catalyst 3560 Series can be purchased with the IP Base or IP Services licenses pre-installed. The IP Base license offers advanced QoS, rate limiting, ACLs, and basic static and Routing Information Protocol (RIP) routing functions. The IP Services license provides a richer set of enterprise-class features, including advanced hardware-based IPv6 unicast and IPv6 Multicast routing as well as policy-based routing (PBR). The IP Services license upgrades Cisco Catalyst 3560 Series switches to include IPv6 routing support. Upgrade licenses are available to upgrade a switch from the IP Base license to the IP Services license.

The SFP-based GE ports accommodate a range of SFP transceivers, including the Cisco 1000BASE-T, 1000BASE-SX, 1000BASE-LX, 1000BASE-ZX, and CWDM SFP transceivers. These ports also support the Cisco Catalyst 3560 SFP Interconnect Cable for establishing a low-cost Gigabit Ethernet point-to-point connection.

Power over Ethernet

The Cisco Catalyst 3560 Series can provide a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) for deployments that incorporate Cisco IP phones, Cisco Aironet^® wireless LAN (WLAN) access points, or any IEEE 802.3af-compliant end device. PoE removes the need for wall power to each PoE-enabled device and eliminates the cost for additional electrical cabling that would otherwise be necessary in IP phone and WLAN deployments. The Cisco Catalyst 3560 8-port PoE and 24-port PoE configurations can support 8 and 24 simultaneous full-powered PoE ports at 15.4W for maximum powered-device support. The Cisco Catalyst 3560 12-port PoE can support 8 ports at 15.4W or 12 ports at 10W or any combination in between. Taking advantage of Cisco Catalyst Intelligent Power Management, the 48-port PoE configurations can deliver the necessary power to support 24 ports at 15.4W, 48 ports at 7.7W, or any combination in between. Maximum power availability for a converged voice and data network is attainable when a Cisco Catalyst 3560 switch is combined with the Cisco RPS 2300 Redundant Power System for transparent protection against internal power supply failures and an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) system to safeguard against power outages.

Gigabit Ethernet

At speeds of 1000 Mbps, Gigabit Ethernet provides the bandwidth to meet new and evolving network demands, alleviate bottlenecks, and boost performance while increasing the return on existing infrastructure investments. Today's workers are placing higher demands on networks, running multiple, concurrent applications. For example, a worker joins a team conference call through an IP videoconference, sends a 10-MB spreadsheet to meeting participants, broadcasts the latest marketing video for the team to evaluate, and queries the customer-relationship-management database for the latest real-time feedback. Meanwhile, a multigigabyte system backup starts in the background and the latest virus updates are delivered to the client. The Cisco Catalyst 3560 provides a means to intelligently scale the network beyond 100 Mbps over existing Category 5 copper cabling and simultaneously support PoE for maximum productivity and investment protection.

Intelligence in the Network

Networks of today are evolving to address four new developments at the network edge:

●   Increase in desktop computing power

●   Introduction of bandwidth-intensive applications

●   Expansion of highly sensitive data on the network

●   Presence of multiple device types, such as IP phones, WLAN access points, and IP video cameras

These new demands are contending for resources with many existing mission-critical applications. As a result, IT professionals must view the edge of the network as critical to effectively manage the delivery of information and applications.

As companies increasingly rely on networks as the strategic business infrastructure, it is more important than ever to help ensure their high availability, security, scalability, and control. By adding Cisco intelligent functions for LAN access, customers can now deploy networkwide intelligent services that consistently address these requirements from the desktop to the core and through the WAN.

With Cisco Catalyst Intelligent Ethernet switches, Cisco Systems^® helps enable companies to realize the full benefits of adding intelligent services into their networks. Deployment of capabilities that make the network infrastructure highly available to accommodate time-critical needs, scalable to accommodate growth, secure enough to protect confidential information, and capable of differentiating and controlling traffic flows is critical to further optimizing network operations.

Cisco EnergyWise Technology

Cisco EnergyWise is an innovative architecture, added to the Cisco Catalyst 3560 switches, promoting companywide sustainability by reducing energy consumption across an entire corporate infrastructure and affecting more than 50 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions created by worldwide building infrastructure, a much greater effect than the 2 percent generated by the IT industry. Cisco EnergyWise enables companies to measure the power consumption of network infrastructure and network-attached devices and manage power consumption with specific policies, reducing power consumption to realize increased cost savings, potentially affecting any powered device.

EnergyWise encompasses a highly intelligent network based approach to communicate messages that measure and control energy between network devices and endpoints. The network discovers Cisco EnergyWise manageable devices, monitors their power consumption, and takes action based on business rules to reduce power consumption. EnergyWise uses a unique domain-naming system to query and summarize information from large sets of devices, making it simpler than traditional network management capabilities. Cisco EnergyWise’s management interfaces allow facilities and network management applications to communicate with endpoints and each other using the network as a unifying fabric. The management interface uses standard SNMP or SSL to integrate Cisco and third-party management systems.

Cisco EnergyWise extends the network as a platform for power control plane for gathering, managing, and reducing power consumption of all devices, resulting in companywide optimized power delivery and reduced energy costs.

Enhanced Security

With the wide range of security features that the Cisco Catalyst 3560 Series offers, businesses can protect important information, keep unauthorized people off the network, guard privacy, and maintain uninterrupted operation.

Cisco Identity Based Networking Services (IBNS) provides authentication, access control, and security policy administration to secure network connectivity and resources. Cisco IBNS in the Cisco Catalyst 3560 Series prevents unauthorized access and helps ensure that users get only their designated privileges. It provides the ability to dynamically administer granular levels of network access. Using the 802.1x standard and the Cisco Access Control Server (ACS), users can be assigned a VLAN or an ACL upon authentication, regardless of where they connect to the network. This setup allows IT departments to enable strong security policies without compromising user mobility-and with minimal administrative overhead.

To guard against denial-of-service and other attacks, ACLs can be used to restrict access to sensitive portions of the network by denying packets based on source and destination MAC addresses, IP addresses, or TCP/UDP ports. ACL lookups are done in hardware, so forwarding performance is not compromised when implementing ACL-based security.

Port security can be used to limit access on an Ethernet port based on the MAC address of the device to which it is connected. It also can be used to limit the total number of devices plugged into a switch port, thereby protecting the switch from a MAC flooding attack as well as reducing the risks of rogue wireless access points or hubs.

With Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) snooping, DHCP spoofing can be thwarted by allowing only DHCP requests (but not responses) from untrusted user-facing ports. Additionally, the DHCP Interface Tracker (Option 82) helps enable granular control over IP address assignment by augmenting a host IP address request with the switch port ID. Building further on the DHCP snooping capabilities, IP address spoofing can be thwarted using Dynamic ARP Inspection and IP Source Guard.

The MAC Address Notification feature can be used to monitor the network and track users by sending an alert to a management station so that network administrators know when and where users entered the network. The Private VLAN feature isolates ports on a switch, helping ensure that traffic travels directly from the entry point to the aggregation device through a virtual path and cannot be directed to another port.

Secure Shell (SSH) Protocol Version 2, Kerberos, and Simple Network Management Protocol Version 3 (SNMPv3) encrypt administrative and network-management information, protecting the network from tampering or eavesdropping. TACACS+ or RADIUS authentication enables centralized access control of switches and restricts unauthorized users from altering the configurations. Alternatively, a local username and password database can be configured on the switch itself. Fifteen levels of authorization on the switch console and two levels on the Web-based management interface provide the ability to give different levels of configuration capabilities to different administrators.

Availability and Scalability

The Cisco Catalyst 3560 Series is equipped with a robust set of features that allow for network scalability and higher availability through IP routing as well as a complete suite of Spanning Tree Protocol enhancements aimed to maximize availability in a Layer 2 network.

The Cisco Catalyst 3560 switches deliver high-performance, hardware-based IP routing. The Cisco Express Forwarding-based routing architecture allows for increased scalability and performance. This architecture allows for very high-speed lookups while also helping ensure the stability and scalability necessary to meet the needs of future requirements. In addition to dynamic IP unicast routing, the Cisco Catalyst 3560 Series is perfectly equipped for networks requiring multicast support. Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM) and Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) snooping in hardware make the Cisco Catalyst 3560 Series switches ideal for intensive multicast environments.

Implementing routed uplinks to the core improves network availability by enabling faster failover protection and simplifying the Spanning Tree Protocol algorithm by terminating all Spanning Tree Protocol instances at the aggregator switch. If one of the uplinks fails, quicker failover to the redundant uplink can be achieved with a scalable routing protocol such as Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) or Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP) rather than relying on standard Spanning Tree Protocol convergence. Redirection of a packet after a link failure using a routing protocol results in faster failover than a solution that uses Layer 2 spanning-tree enhancements. Additionally, routed uplinks allow better bandwidth use by implementing equal cost routing (ECR) on the uplinks to perform load balancing. Routed uplinks optimize the utility of uplinks out of the LAN Access by eliminating unnecessary broadcast data flows into the network backbone.

The Cisco Catalyst 3560 also offers dramatic bandwidth savings as a wiring-closet switch in a multicast environment. Using routed uplinks to the network core eliminates the requirement to transmit multiple streams of the same multicast from the upstream content servers to LAN access switches. For example, if three users are assigned to three separate VLANs and they all want to view multicast ABC, then three streams of multicast ABC must be transmitted from the upstream router to the wiring-closet switch-assuming the wiring-closet switch is not capable of routed uplinks. Deploying IP routing to the core with Cisco Catalyst 3560 switches allows users to create a scalable, multicast-rich network. The Cisco IP Services license offers IPv6 routing , including support for simultaneous IPv4 and IPv6 forwarding. IPv6 protocol support includes OSPFv3, and EIGRPv6. IPv6 management and MLD Snooping are supported on all Cisco Catalyst 3560 software images.

Enhancements to the standard Spanning Tree Protocol, such as Per-VLAN Spanning Tree Plus (PVST+), Uplink Fast, and PortFast, maximize network uptime. PVST+ allows for Layer 2 load sharing on redundant links to efficiently use the extra capacity inherent in a redundant design. Uplink Fast, PortFast, and BackboneFast all greatly reduce the standard 30- to 60-second Spanning Tree Protocol convergence time. Loop guard and bridge-protocol-data-unit (BPDU) guard provide Spanning Tree Protocol loop avoidance.

Advanced QoS

The Cisco Catalyst 3560 offers superior multilayer, granular QoS features to help ensure that network traffic is classified and prioritized, and that congestion is avoided in the best possible manner. Configuration of QoS is greatly simplified through automatic QoS (Auto QoS), a feature that detects Cisco IP phones and automatically configures the switch for the appropriate classification and egress queuing. This optimizes traffic prioritization and network availability without the challenge of a complex configuration.

The Cisco Catalyst 3560 can classify, reclassify, police, mark, queue, and schedule incoming packets, and can queue and schedule packets at egress. Packet classification allows the network elements to discriminate between various traffic flows and enforce policies based on Layer 2 and Layer 3 QoS fields.

To implement QoS, the Cisco Catalyst 3560 Series Switch first identifies traffic flows or packet groups, and classifies or reclassifies these groups using the Differentiated Services Code Point (DSCP) field or the 802.1p Class of Service (CoS) field. Classification and reclassification can be based on criteria as specific as the source or destination IP address, source or destination MAC address, or the Layer 4 TCP or UDP port. At the ingress, the Cisco Catalyst 3560 also polices to determine whether a packet is in or out of profile, marks to change the classification label, passes through or drops out of profile packets, and queues packets based on classification. Control- and data-plane ACLs are supported on all ports to help ensure proper treatment on a per-packet basis.

The Cisco Catalyst 3560 supports four egress queues per port, allowing the network administrator to be more discriminating and specific in assigning priorities for the various applications on the LAN. At egress, the switch performs scheduling and congestion control. Scheduling is an algorithm or process that determines the order in which the queues are processed. The Cisco Catalyst 3560 Series Switch supports shaped round robin (SRR) and strict priority queuing. The SRR algorithm helps ensure differential prioritization.

These QoS features allow network administrators to prioritize mission-critical and bandwidth-intensive traffic, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) (Oracle, etc.), voice (IP telephony traffic), and computer-aided design (CAD) or computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) over less-time-sensitive applications such as FTP or e-mail. For example, it would be highly undesirable to have a large file download destined to one port on a wiring-closet switch and have quality implications such as increased latency in voice traffic destined to another port on this switch. This condition is avoided by making sure that voice traffic is properly classified and prioritized throughout the network. Other applications, such as Web browsing, can be treated as low priority and handled on a best-effort basis.

The Cisco Catalyst 3560 Series can perform rate limiting through its support of the Cisco Committed Information Rate (CIR) function. Through CIR, bandwidth can be guaranteed in increments as low as 8 kbps. Bandwidth can be allocated based on several criteria, including MAC source address, MAC destination address, IP source address, IP destination address, and TCP or UDP port number. Bandwidth allocation is essential when network environments require service-level agreements or when it is necessary for the network manager to control the bandwidth given to certain users.

Management

The new Cisco Express Setup feature simplifies the initial configuration of a switch. Users now have the option to set up the switch through a Web browser, eliminating the need for more complex terminal-emulation programs and knowledge of the command-line interface (CLI). Cisco Express Setup reduces the cost of deployment by helping less-skilled personnel quickly and simply set up switches.

Cisco Network Assistant is a PC-based network-management application optimized for LANs of small and medium-sized businesses with up to 250 users. Cisco Network Assistant offers centralized management of Cisco switches, routers, and WLAN access points. It supports a wide range of Cisco Catalyst intelligent switches from Cisco Catalyst 2950 through Cisco Catalyst 4506. Through a user-friendly GUI, users can configure and manage a wide array of switch functions and start the device manager of Cisco routers and Cisco wireless access points. A few mouse clicks enable the Cisco recommended security, availability, and QoS features without the need to consult a detailed design guide. The Security wizard automatically restricts unauthorized access to servers with sensitive data. Smartports and wizards save hours of time for network administrators, eliminate human errors, and help ensure that the configuration of the switch is optimized for these applications. Available at no cost, Cisco Network Assistant can be downloaded from Cisco.com.

In addition to the Cisco Network Assistant, the Cisco Catalyst 3560 Series switches provide for extensive management using SNMP network-management platforms such as CiscoWorks LAN Management Solution (LMS). LMS is a suite of powerful management tools that simplify the configuration, administration, monitoring, and troubleshooting of Cisco networks. It integrates these capabilities into a world-class solution for improving the accuracy and efficiency of your operations staff, while increasing the overall availability of your network. LMS supports over 400 different device types providing:

●   Network discovery, topology views, end-station tracking, and VLAN management

●   Real-time network fault analysis with easy-to-deploy device specific best-practice templates

●   Hardware and software inventory management, centralized configuration tools, and syslog monitoring

●   Network response time and availability monitoring and tracking

●   Real-time device, link, and port traffic management, analysis, and reporting

Cisco Catalyst 3560 SFP Interconnect Cable

The Cisco Catalyst 3560 SFP Interconnect Cable (see Figure 2) provides for a low-cost point-to-point Gigabit Ethernet connection between Cisco Catalyst 3560 switches. The 50cm cable is an alternative to using SFP transceivers when interconnecting Cisco Catalyst 3560 switches through their SFP ports over a short distance.

Figure 2.     Cisco Catalyst 3560 SFP Interconnect Cable

Table 1 gives the features and benefits of the Cisco Catalyst 3560 Series. Table 2 gives the hardware specifications, and Table 3 gives the power specifications. Table 4 lists the management and standards support, and Table 5 provides the safety and compliance information.