Thursday, December 6, 2012

Fun factsheet for Cisco 3500XL and 2900XL switches

It still seems like a popular topic, and these switches never really die, so here are some fun facts about them that I found to be useful (both from my experience and from the documentation):
  • These are layer 2 switches;
  • So they don't have DHCP snooping capabilities;
  • Nor any ARP inspection (DAI).
  • They can't do IP routing, or NAT.
  • Traffic distribution over an etherchannel can be based on source or destination MAC addresses, but not both. Distribution can be configured per etherchannel, not just system-wide. You can't distribute based on layer3-4 (IP,TCP/UDP) info.
  • No layer3 ACLs for switching. (Just for the control plane).
  • They have 2 hardware priority queues.
  • They only support L2 COS, not DSCP or TOS.
  • For IP phones, you have to go with a switchport trunk, encapsulation dot1q, nonegotiate, native vlan , allowed vlan ,, swichport voice vlan  type of setup.
  • The 3500XL and 2900XL use the same software, you can run 2900XL images on a 3500XL box.
  • The only members of the 2900XL family with Gigabit ports are the modular, 2U high chassis.
  • They do not support MSTP and GVRP.
  • They do not support LLDP.
  • The 2900 series does not support POE; but some 3500 series models do: look for the -PWR in the model name.
So far that's it, I might extend the list if something comes to mind.

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