Build a Home Lab
Part Six - Cisco Catalyst 3550 Ethernet Switch
This is Part Six of the "Build A Home Lab" series. If you missed Parts One through Five, you can scroll to the bottom of this page and click on the links to view these.
As most of you know by now, the Cisco Catalyst 3550 Ethernet Switch is the switch that is now being used in the CCIE lab. As a matter of fact, two of them. So, this section of the "Build A Home Lab" series will go over these switches. Many of you may have already seen the information presented here because we took it from the Cisco website and from other free websites.
The Cisco Catalyst 3550 Series Intelligent Ethernet Switch is a line of stackable, multilayer switches that provide high availability, quality of service (QoS), and security to enhance network operations. With a range of Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet configurations, the Cisco Catalyst 3550 Series is a powerful option for enterprise and metro access applications.
Customers can deploy industry-leading intelligent services, such as advanced quality of service (QoS), rate-limiting, Cisco security access control lists, multicast management, and high-performance IP routing--while maintaining the simplicity of traditional LAN switching. Embedded in the Catalyst 3550 Series is the Cisco Cluster Management Suite (CMS) Software, which allows users to simultaneously configure and troubleshoot multiple Catalyst desktop switches using a standard Web browser. Cisco CMS Software provides new configuration wizards that greatly simplify the implementation of converged applications and network-wide services.
The models that currently belong to this Cisco product series are as follows:
Cisco Catalyst 3550 12G Switch
Cisco Catalyst 3550 12T Switch
Cisco Catalyst 3550 24 DC SMI Switch
Cisco Catalyst 3550 24 EMI Switch
Cisco Catalyst 3550 24 FX SMI Switch
Cisco Catalyst 3550 24 PWR Switch
Cisco Catalyst 3550 24 SMI Switch
Cisco Catalyst 3550 48 EMI Switch
Cisco Catalyst 3550 48 SMI Switch
The Cisco Catalyst 3550 switch has been introduced to replace the aging Catalyst
3500XL Layer 2 switch that previously was part of Cisco? answer to the access layer
switch market. The Catalyst 3550 and 2950 switches have replaced the Catalyst 3500 XL switches. The end-of-sale for the Catalyst 3512 XL, 3524 XL, and 3548 XL was July 27, 2002. This end-of-sale announcement does not include the Catalyst 3524-PWR XL and the 3508G XL.
The 3500XL switch is part of the Catalyst ?L?family, which includes the 2900XL, 2900XL LRE, and the 3500XL. Something new to Cisco? lower end switches was that they ran a complete version of IOS. An interesting note is that Cisco, in an effort to standardize the IOS over their entire product line, created a switch that ran router software. The XL series switches had quite a number of commands that were ?eft-over?router commands. For example, you could type ?p address 192.168.1.1
255.255.255.0?on interface FastEthernet 0/1 and the switch would take the command
and also display this under the running-configuration. The XL series switches are strictly Layer 2 devices, meaning they had no layer 3 capability outside of the management interface (Telnet, SNMP, etc). This means that your recently entered IP address is useless; however the switch did take the command without error. This was one of the many frustrating ?eatures?of the XL series switches. The IOS was not completely custom-fit for the devices, therefore leaving behind a myriad of unusable commands.
Engineers that were new to the Cisco world appreciated the fact that these devices ran
the IOS that was like the software that ran on the routers. Older Engineers that were
extremely familiar with Cisco? other LAN switching products, such as the Catalyst 5000
platform, were unimpressed with the devices operating system and command structure.
The 3500XL switch is IOS based; where as the Catalyst 5000 is ?et-based?which means
that the bulk of the commands entered into the 5000 begin with a ?et?(e.g. set vlan) command.
One difference picked up by those that configured the higher port-density XL switches is
that you have to configure every port individually, unlike the 5000 in which you can
specify a range of ports in your configuration. These minor setbacks have since been
fixed in the newer Catalyst 3550 platform, although Cisco has chosen to stick with IOS as
opposed to the set-based OS running on the older Catalyst switches. Cisco has also
been migrating the Catalyst 6000/6500 series to Native IOS. Soon every switch from the
8540 down to the 2950 will run Cisco IOS out of the box.
As previously mentioned the Catalyst 3500XL series switch is a Layer 2 device, which
means that it has no routing capability. If a decision requires the switch to look at
anything more than the MAC address, then the 3500XL falls short. The Cisco Catalyst 3550 Series switches are a line of enterprise-class, stackable, multilayer switches that provide high availability, security and quality of service (QoS) to enhance the operation of the network. With a range of Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet configurations, the Catalyst 3550 Series can serve as both a powerful access layer switch for medium enterprise wiring closets and as a backbone switch for mid-sized networks. For the first time, customers can deploy network-wide intelligent services, such as advanced QoS, rate-limiting,
Cisco security access control lists (ACLs), multicast management, and high-performance
IP routing?hile maintaining the simplicity of traditional LAN switching. Embedded in the Catalyst 3550 Series is the Cisco Cluster Management Suite (CMS) Software, which allows users to simultaneously configure and troubleshoot multiple Catalyst desktop switches using a standard Web browser. Cisco CMS Software provides new configuration wizards that greatly simplify the implementation of converged
applications and network-wide services.
Basic 3524XL Stats:
10Gbps Switching Fabric, 5Gbps Forwarding Rate, 6.5 million packets-per-second
4mb Shared Memory for Layer 2 switching, Storage of 8,192 MAC addresses
Basic 3550-24-EMI Stats:
8.8Gbps Switching Fabric, 4.4Gbps Forwarding Rate, 6.6 million packets-per-second
2mb Shared Memory shared by all ports, 64mb RAM / 16mb Flash, Storage of 8,000 MACs, 16,000 Unicast Routes, 2,000 Multicast Routes, Max MTU 1546 for MPLS bridging.
What is the difference between the SMI and EMI 3550 Switches?
The Cisco Catalyst 3550-24, 3550-48, and 3550-24 PWR switches can be ordered with the SMI or the EMI. The Catalyst 3550-24-DC and 3550-24-FX can only be ordered with the SMI pre-installed, but as with all switches running the SMI, they can be upgraded to the EMI version using an EMI upgrade kit. The Cisco Catalyst 3550-12T and 3550-12G switches come installed with EMI. The EMI enables a richer set of enterprise-class features including, advanced hardware-based IP unicast and multicast routing, and the Web Cache Communication Protocol (WCCP).
You can also configure the SMI image to perform Layer 3 Routing. There is support for basic IP unicast routing via Static and RIPv1/v2 using the SMI image. The EMI image provides advanced IP unicast and multicast routing. These advanced routing protocols are Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (IGRP), Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP), Border Gateway Protocol version 4 (BGPv4), and Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM).
Both the SMI and t