The Catalyst 2948G-L3 is a fixed-configuration Layer 3 Ethernet switch with 48 RJ-45 10/100 ports and two Gigabit Ethernet uplink ports with modular GBIC interfaces. The switch is ideal for backbone deployment in small to mid-sized networks that require wire-speed Layer 3 performance but do not require the high 10/100 Mbps Ethernet port counts or Gigabit Ethernet density offered in the Catalyst 6000 and Catalyst 8500 series of switches.
The Catalyst 2948G-L3 provides an aggregate throughput of more than 10 Mpps for Layer 3 switching. These data rates apply not only to IP and IPX traffic but also to IP multicast and bridged traffic and are a result of using high-speed application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) technology on each port to perform true Layer 3 switching. The Catalyst 2948G-L3 supports a high-performance architecture with 22 Gbps bandwidth. The switch fabric is capable of supporting all 48 10/100 ports and two Gigabit uplinks simultaneously at wire speed.
The Catalyst 2948G-L3 is housed in a 1.5 rack unit (RU) chassis and can be provisioned with an optional external redundant power supply. It supports a 22 Gbps shared-memory, fully non-blocking switch fabric, high- performance RISC processor that provides the routing intelligence and individual port-based ASICs for the Layer 3 switching. The Catalyst 2948G-L3 uses Cisco Express Forwarding (CEF), which has been developed for the Cisco 12000 series gigabit switch router (GSR), the Catalyst 8500, and the Cisco 7500. This technology provides Layer 3 switching based on a topology map of the entire network that is distributed to each port-based ASIC, allowing it to make autonomous switching decisions without the involvement of a centralized CPU.
The Catalyst 2948G-L3 provides a complete IP routing solution without sacrificing any of the services that are required to build a scalable network. The Catalyst 2948G-L3 is a feature-rich switch with full Cisco IOS implementation that allows network managers to continue to administer and manage their networks as they do today while scaling their backbone bandwidths to gigabit speeds. The Catalyst 2948G-L3 supports all the routing protocols that are used today in mid-sized networks. These protocols include:
In addition to these routing protocols, the Catalyst 2948G-L3 supports all the additional protocols necessary to build scalable, reliable networks, including:
The Catalyst 2948G-L3 with its IPX wire-speed performance is also a full-fledged IPX router with the enhancements only Cisco IOS can offer. It provides basic services such as Novell NetWork RIP and Service Advertising Protocols (SAPs), value-added routing protocols such as Novell Enhanced IGRP, as well as route distribution among all of these protocols. In addition, the Catalyst 2948G-L3 supports those features that help to make a large Novell network scale. These features include:
This feature set as well as the wire-speed IPX switching make the Catalyst 2948G-L3 unique in terms of switching platforms.
The Catalyst 2948G-L3 supports IP multicast at wire speeds across all its ports. As multicast applications such as Microsoft NetShow and NetMeeting become more widely deployed, end-to-end multicast support becomes increasingly important with multicast routing protocols that are integral to a consistent end-to-end multicast solution. The Catalyst 2948G-L3 supports both Protocol-Independent Multicast (PIM) sparse and dense modes, and Distance Vector Multicast Routing Protocol (DVMRP) interoperability for legacy applications. The Catalyst 2948G-L3 provides support for IGMP, Versions 1 and 2, and CGMP server capabilities for integrating IP multicast support with Catalyst wiring closet switches. These protocols are necessary not only for IP multicast clients to join groups but also for efficient leave processing, which saves bandwidth and end-station CPU cycles.
The Catalyst 2948G-L3 supports both Fast EtherChannel® and Gigabit EtherChannel technologies, allowing network managers to group up to four of the 10/100 ports into a channel and group the two Gigabit Ethernets into an uplink channel.
The Catalyst 2948G-L3 incorporates a centralized non- blocking 22-Gb shared-memory switching fabric. The rich QoS capabilities of the switching fabric enable network managers to protect mission-critical applications by supporting delay-sensitive traffic while managing bandwidth in the campus backbone. The switching fabric supports per-flowqueuing (PFQ), differentiated delay priorities using a WRR scheduler for delay-sensitive applications, and differentiated loss priorities for managing congestion and traffic policing and shaping. The fast packet memory embedded in the switching fabric is allocated dynamically on a per-queue (flow) basis. This dynamic allocation used in conjunction with user-defined queue thresholds and configurable queue scheduling weights ensures that time-sensitive traffic is handled properly with no packet loss. These thresholds and queuing weights can be dynamically adjusted with CiscoAssure Policy Networking, allowing an end-to-end QoS solution.
The Catalyst 2948G-L3 has the ability to prevent security breaches via the use of both IP and IPX access lists. This is useful in preventing users from accessing certain applications or services. The Catalyst 2948G-L3 supports both inbound and outbound access lists on its two Gigabit Ethernet interfaces. These access lists can be defined similar to any Cisco IOS router as standard IPX access lists as well as standard and extended IP-based access lists. Having both inbound and outbound control of packets on the Gigabit Ethernets allows network managers to prevent traffic both on egress as well as ingress on the 10/100 Ethernet ports. In addition, the Catalyst 2948G-L3 will have the capability to prevent traffic communication between 10/100 Ethernet ports. When enabled, users on the 10/100 ports can only send traffic to the Gigabit Ethernet ports and not to each other.
The Catalyst 2948G-L3 is managed by the powerful CiscoWorks2000 network management products option. The Essentials product suite leverages the power of intranets with browser-based access anywhere within the network. Network managers can walk up to any browser console, simply identify who they are via the access control interface, and immediately begin checking on the uptime of each device, the active software versions that are running the Catalyst 2948G-L3 and print a year 2000-compliant report. For drill-down, real-time device status information, the network operations staff can launch the award-winning CiscoView application from their fault-management station and check on the health of the power supplies, CPU, and the operational status of each port at a glance.
For more sophisticated network-wide information, network managers can launch the CiscoWorks for Switched Internetworks (CWSI) campus product bundle, which automatically discovers the physical and logical representations of the Catalyst switch networks. This object-based discovery system offers detailed information on the location and type of each switch within the network and the type of links that connect the switches together and displays integrity reports on the configurations between each switch. All this information is provided graphically within the topology interface with search and location utilities. This topology interface offers a convenient launching point for other applications within CWSI campus, including the Remote Monitoring (RMON)-based traffic-analysis application.
The Catalyst 2948G-L3 is a cost-effective, high-performance, feature-rich Layer3 Ethernet switch ideally suited for small to mid-size backbones that require Layer 3 switching in increments of 48 10/100 connections. It supports wire-speed routing and switching of IP, IPX, and IP Multicast across all interfaces. The Catalyst 2948G-L3 features a dedicated configuration of 48 10/ 100 Ethernet ports and 2 modular Gigabit Ethernet uplink ports. This new Catalyst switch has a non-blocking, 22 Gbps architecture that enables all ports to L3 switch simultaneously at wire speed. The two gigabit uplinks support standard GBIC technology, giving network managers the flexibility to select and change gigabit interfaces in the Catalyst 2948G-L3 quickly.
10 Mbps operation—Yellow
100 Mbps operation—Green
