Cisco Expert Network Consulting

Cisco's Catalyst line of modular and fixed-configuration switches offers speed and control at the access, aggregation, and backbone areas of converged IP voice, video, and data networks for organizations that range from small businesses and branches to global enterprises and service providers. Progent's Cisco-certified consultants can provide online and onsite support for Catalyst family switches to assist your organization to design a cost-effective infrastructure that meets your unique business needs, set up pilot testing, deploy Catalyst switches, implement and verify a sensible security plan, streamline system management and performance tracking, deliver repair and maintenance services, optimize switch capacity, and configure Catalyst's fault-tolerant solutions to achieve non-stop operation, Progent can assist you to maintain and troubleshoot your legacy Catalyst switches or upgrade efficiently to the latest models of Catalyst switches following industry best practices to make sure that you receive the maximum return from your investment in your network.

The demand for intelligent, high-performance switching is driven by a confluence of fairly new computing patterns whose net impact is a virtual avalanche of data traffic:

• Cloud networking and an associated reliance on intensive virtualization
• The pervasiveness of always-connected mobile devices
• Data guzzling HD video applications
• Social media for business
• The popularity of Big Data in data analytics

Private, public and hybrid clouds are only operationally realistic by utilizing virtualization on a massive scale. Virtualized infrastructures radically reduce expenses by permitting aggressively high resource utilization and requiring minimal real estate and power use. But this also requires that relatively limited resources must accommodate substantial amounts of data. The Bring-Your-Own-Device paradigm has created a steep rise in the number of mobile users that have be supported by IT networks, and these clients run a great deal of data-intensive, rich media apps. Social media for business is replacing email as the main driver for collaboration and is generating an ever increasing demand for data. Enterprises who want to remain competitive are resorting to Big Data technology to search through enormous and varied silos of corporate data, which in turn produces Big Traffic. All of these computing trends are relatively new, and combined they create a critical need for an advanced class of switches that feature much higher performance, intelligence, availability and ease of management than older platforms were engineered to deliver.

Cisco's current lineup of Catalyst switches are ideal for the distribution and core layers levels of campus deployments where office employees must be supported with consistent performance, strict user access control, careful segregation, application intelligence, and wired and wireless convergence. Cisco's Catalyst switches are designed to meet the demand for performance and intelligence with features that include high-density 10G/40G/100G services, switching performance as high as 11.4 Tbps for each chassis and double that for each switching system, an extensive catalog of technologies such as EVN to facilitate the creation of virtual networks, Virtual Switching System technology for switch failover with subsecond backup switch restoration and 99.999% uptime, IPv6 support, Application Visibility and Control to optimize network resource usage, and advanced Quality of Service (QoS) capabilities for video traffic control.

Cisco Catalyst switches enable organizations of any size to build intelligent switching and routing services into their network architecture, creating an ecosystem that can handle current needs, expand to support future capacity demands, protect sensitive information, and separate and control tasks to optimize network operations.

Cisco Catalyst 2960 Series Switches and Catalyst 3560-CX Switches
Cisco's Catalyst 2960-CX is a fixed-port managed switch that is compact, fanless, low power, and allows a variety of mounting options. The switch has eight 10/100/1000 Ethernet ports and two 1-GE uplink ports and has an option for Power over Ethernet (PoE). Cisco's Catalyst 3560-CX is a fixed-configuration managed switch packaged in a compact, quiet and energy-efficient unit that can be mounted almost anywhere convenient. Models are available with 8 or 12 10/100/1000 Ethernet ports or with 6 1-GE ports plus 2 multigigabit ports. Up to four uplinks are offered, and Power over Ethernet (PoE) is also available.

Cisco's Catalyst 2960-L family includes value-priced fixed-configuration switches designed for branch offices, retail areas, and other places where space is limited. These compact switches include 8 to 48 Gigabit Ethernet ports and two or four SFP uplink ports. PoE support reduces clutter and fanless operation for the 8- versions eliminates noise. RJ-45 interfaces support 10BASE-T, 100BASE-TX, 1000BASE-T and 1000BASE-T SFP-ports.

Catalyst 2960-X and Catalyst 2960-XR Series switches improve on the 2690-S line by delivering switching capacity of 216 Gbps and supporting Cisco's FlexStack-Plus stacking technology by means of a hot-swappable module that can combine 8 switches in a FlexStack Plus stack capable of 80 Gbps of stacking performance. Catalyst 2900 Series switches also work with NetFlow-Lite for conserving forwarding data for analysis. The Catalyst 2960-XR switch is capable of L3 dynamic routing, providing the convenience of using one switch for L2 and L3 routing.

Catalyst 3650 and Catalyst 3850 Switches
Catalyst 3650 and Catalyst 3850 series switches are fixed-configuration, stackable access switches based on Cisco's IOS XE OS and incorporating full wireless network controller capability that allows you to control wired and wireless networks on a single device managed by one OS. Cisco has versions with 24 or 48 built-in 10/100/1000 Ethernet connections with PoE+, four 1-Gigabit or four 10-GB Ethernet uplink ports, and support for as many as 9 Catalyst switches in a stack. All versions provide expandable QoS, stateful switchover for high uptime, software support for IPv4 and IPv6 routing, multicast, and enhanced security.

Because wireless traffic is visible at the Catalyst 3000 Series switch, administrators can identify and prioritize wireless traffic by means of Cisco's Flexible NetFlow technology along with sophisticated Quality of Service capabilities for an improved user environment and faster problem isolation. Multigigabit Ethernet switching can handle the high-bandwidth called for by the latest 802.11ac Wave 2 wireless standard on existing cabling solutions. (To find out about Progent's consulting and support services for Cisco's 802.11ac Aironet wireless access points and wireless controllers, and Cisco's Meraki cloud-managed access points, refer to Planning and Deployment Support for Cisco Wireless Technology.)

The Catalyst 3650 Series switch delivers stacking bandwidth of up to 160 Gbps and supports up to 25 Wi-Fi access points and 1000 Wi-Fi users on each switch or stack. The Catalyst 3850 offers stacking bandwidth as high as 480 Gbps and supports up to 50 wireless access points and 2000 wireless clients per stack. Catalyst 3850 SFP Fiber Switches have 12 or 24 1G fiber data ports at line rate on every port, offering long distance connections, advanced security, and an identical wired and wireless experience.

Catalyst 4500-E Series and Cisco Catalyst 4500-X Series Switches
Catalyst 4500-E Series and and Cisco Catalyst 4500-X Series switches are designed for campus and distribution environments where space for networking hardware is limited. Powered by Cisco's IOS XE software, the Catalyst 4500-E and 4500-X families simplify virtualization thanks to Cisco's EVN and VSS solutions. Network virtualization makes it possible to segment a hardware network into multiple virtual networks whose data planes and control planes are logically distinct. This provides the efficient utilization, security and compliance, recoverability, and simplified management required for Cloud computing or other scenarios where a common resource pool must be shared by applications and services that need to operate in total privacy from one another. EVN speeds up the task of creating virtual networks and scales to 32 VNs for each switch. EVN incorporates the capabilities of Multi-virtual routing and forwarding and includes new features including VNET Tags and a simple way for duplicating replicating routes between VNs. VSS technology makes it easy to set up Catalyst 4500-E and 4500-X Series switches to produce zero-downtime virtual networks with optimized traffic load balancing.

Cisco Catalyst 4500E Switches
The Supervisor Engine 8-E for the Catalyst 4500-E modular switch includes an integrated wireless network controller that works with Cisco's Unified Access solution for wired/wireless convergence. this is the initial Catalyst supervisor engine to support wired plus wireless services on a single switch based on Cisco's IOS XE. Technologies include Cisco's FNF technology for capacity planning across both wired and wireless networks, Cisco TrustSec/SGT2 wired/wireless security, identical Quality of Service for wired and wireless clients, and the expansion of Nonstop Forwarding with Stateful Switchover to cover wireless data traffic for enterprise-class high availability.

Offered in chassis that have from three to 10 slots, Catalyst 4500-E switches with Supervisor 8-E can support up to 384 1-Gigabit Ethernet access ports, 193 Gigabit Ethernet non-blocking fiber ports, 96 10-Gigabit Ethernet fiber connections, and eight 10GE uplink ports. Cisco's Supervisor Engine 8-E delivers up to 928 Gbps of wired capacity per system and 20 Gbps of wireless termination performance. 50 wireless access points and 2000 wireless clients can be supported on each chassis, and up to 250 access points and 4000 wireless clients can be supported in a dual-switch installation without requiring a separate wireless controller.

Cisco Catalyst 4500-X Series Switches
Cisco's Catalyst 4500-X Series switches are fixed 10GE aggregation switches that can deliver up to 800 Gbps of backplane switching capacity per chassis. The Catalyst 4500-X can have as many as 32 10-Gigabit Ethernet connections on the baseboard and eight additional 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports on the optional expansion module for a total of 40 10GE connections. Eight 10GE uplink ports are available with another module. In addition to providing non-stop performance and easy manageability, Cisco's VSS technology on Catalyst 4500-X Series switches provides higher system performance of as much as 1.6 Tbps by enabling all available capacity across VSS-linked Catalyst 4500-X Series switches. Other features include FNF technology for capacity planning, Cisco TrustSec protection, and fast, hardware-based IPv6 forwarding.

Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series and Cisco Catalyst 6800 Series Switches
Catalyst 6500 and Catalyst 6800 Series switches are campus core platforms that incorporate the proven DNA of the Cisco Catalyst 6500 line of products, which first appeared more than a dozen years ago and have been steadily enhanced since then. Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series and Cisco Catalyst 6800 switches offer identical features and operation, and the modular Catalyst 6807-XL supports the Cisco Catalyst 6500 Supervisor Engine 2T and its extensive family of line cards and service modules. This backwards compatibility and commitment to continual improvement protects your information technology investment and enables you to update your network backbone with little downtime or management staff retraining.

Common features of Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series and Catalyst 6800 modular switches that have the Supervisor Engine 2T include the Cisco ISE technology for convenient, single-point control to ensure consistent policy across a distributed network, Virtual Switching System technology for 99.999% availability via multi-level failover, and Cisco's Campus Locator/ID Separation Protocol to support client roaming and mobility and to streamline virtualization and migration to IPv6. Other virtual networking tools to partition specific user groups and serve the unique security and Quality of Service policy requirements of every group include Layer 2 and Layer 3 VPN, full MPLS, Easy Virtual Network, VRF-aware applications for Network Address Translation (NAT) NetFlow, GRE for v4/v6, and L2 geographic extensions with virtual private LAN services (VPLS). For converged wired/wireless networking, the Wireless Services Module 2 (WiSM2) controller Catalyst 6500 Series and Catalyst 6800 Series modular switches supports as many as 1000 APs and 15,000 wireless clients.

Catalyst 6500-E Switches
The Cisco Catalyst 6500-E Series of modular switches are intended for distribution and campus core networks that need world-class availability and high concentrations of 10/100/1000 Ethernet, 1 GE fiber, and/or 10 and 40 Gigabit Ethernet access ports. Models come with three to 13 slots and accept a broad range of modules. Integrated service modules enable wireless, traffic monitoring, and security and compliance. Only E-Series versions of Cisco's extensive line of Catalyst 6500 switches work with the Supervisor Engine 2T.

The Cisco Catalyst 6503-E has a 4 rack unit (4RU) chassis, holds 3 slots, and offers up to 180 Gbps of switching performance per slot. The Catalyst 6503-E supports 97 1-Gigabit Ethernet ports, up to 99 Gigabit Ethernet fiber connections, 34 10GE ports, and 8 40-Gigabit Ethernet ports.

The high-end Catalyst 6513-E has a 19RU, 13-slot form factor and can deliver as much as 180 Gbps of throughput per slot, providing a total system capacity as high as 4 Tbps. A VSS configuration can handle 8 Tbps of throughout. The Catalyst 6513-E Series switch supports up to 529 10/100/1000 Ethernet ports, up to 534 1GE fiber connections, up to 180 10-Gigabit Ethernet access ports, and up to 44 40-Gigabit Ethernet connections.

Catalyst 6800 Series Switches
Catalyst 6800 switches are programmable backbone switches designed to deliver best-of-breed 10/40/100 GE services. The Cisco Catalyst 6880-X switch is a fixed-configuration, compact switch for Ethernet aggregation designed for small or medium-size campus backbones. The Catalyst 6880-X switch delivers as much as 2 Tbps performance and has four slots for plug-in port cards. The top port concentration per chassis is 80 10/100/1000 Ethernet connections or 10-Gigabit Ethernet connections or as many as 20 40-Gigabit Ethernet ports. With VSS, these switches can provide 4 Tbps switching bandwidth and handle up to 158 1 Gigabit Ethernet connections or 10GE access ports or as many as 20 40-Gigabit Ethernet ports.

The modular Cisco Catalyst 6807-XL switch has a 10 RU form factor chassis with 7 expansion slots and supports existing Supervisor Engine 2T line cards and service modules. (Two of the slots are for the Supervisor Engine and the other five are for expansion modules.) The Cisco Catalyst 6807-XL offers as much as 880 Gbps of switching throughput on each slot and up to 11.4 Tbps of switching bandwidth while supporting up to 240 1 Gigabit Ethernet connections or Gigabit Ethernet fiber connections, up to 80 10-Gigabit Ethernet connections or 20 40GE access ports. A two-chassis 6807-XL system with Cisco's Virtual Switching System is capable of supporting 22.8 Tbps of switching performance, 480 10/100/1000 Ethernet connections or Gigabit Ethernet fiber ports, up to 160 10GE connections or 40 40-Gigabit Ethernet ports.

Legacy Catalyst Series Switches Supported by Progent
Progent's Cisco certified network consultants have extensive backgrounds delivering remote and onsite support expertise for legacy Catalyst Series switches for which Cisco has announced End of Life (EOL). These outdated Catalyst switches often cost more to operate and support than current models, provide lower performance and functionality, and in some situations may expose organizations to regulatory compliance and even liability issues. Progent can assist you to support and troubleshoot these legacy switches and can in addition assist you to plan and execute non-disruptive migrations to current models from the Catalyst family or to devices from Cisco's Nexus line of network switches which take advantage of Catalyst design experience. Legacy Catalyst switches supported by Progent include:

Cisco Catalyst Express 500 Series
Cisco's Catalyst Express 500 and 520 line of fixed-configuration switches are designed for businesses with up to 250 workers and provide the dependability, protection, expandability, and feature set small and mid-sized businesses need at an affordable price. Power over Ethernet capability makes it simple to install network devices like VoIP phones and IP TV cameras.

Versions of the Cisco Catalyst Express 500 and 520 managed switches support from 8 to 24 10/100/1000BASE-T Ethernet ports plus the option of redundant power with auto switch-over for additional reliability. Integration with Cisco wireless access points allows businesses to set up a local wireless network quickly and effectively. The Cisco Catalyst Express 500 family provides solid protection against malicious attacks thanks to the Cisco Self-Defending Network technology and Clean Access agents.

Cisco Catalyst 2940 Switch
Cisco Catalyst 2900 fixed-configuration, managed 10/100 switches offer basic workgroup connectivity for small to medium-sized companies. These wire-rate desktop appliances offer IOS Software features for basic data, video, and voice services at the edge of the network. The Cisco Catalyst 2940 line of managed switches are compact, stackable switches with 8 Ethernet ports plus one built-in Fast Ethernet or Gigabit uplink. The enclosures can be deployed away from the wiring closet in cramped areas like on or under a worker's desk or in a conference room.

Cisco Catalyst 2960-S Series Switch
The Catalyst 2960-S Series are fixed switches designed for small businesses and branches. Current versions offer 24 or 48 10/100/1000 Ethernet ports, four 1-Gigabit or two 10-Gigabit uplink ports, and provide switching capacity of up to 176 Gbps. Cisco's FlexStack feature permits four Catalyst 2960-S chassis to be grouped in a stack to perform as one switch that provides 40 Gbps of stacking bandwidth and that reduces operational expense with one-switch configuration. Cisco's IPv6 First Hop Security technology guards against address theft and malicious attacks.

Catalyst 3560 Series Switches
The Catalyst 3560 family is a selection of non-modular switches that features IEEE 802.3af and PoE capability in 10/100 and Gigabit Ethernet configurations. The Cisco Catalyst 3560 is an ideal Layer 2 switch for midsize business network connectivity or local-offices, offering both Gigabit and PoE options for high efficiency while streamlining the installation of vital technology such a VoIP, wireless access, video monitoring, and remote video kiosks. IT managers can activate comprehensive smart services such as quality of service, rate management, access control lists, multicast administration, and broadband IP routing with the ease of conventional network switching.

Cisco's Catalyst 3560 family switch is equipped with a robust set of capabilities that allow for network expandability and enhanced availability via IP routing as well as a complete suite of STP improvements aimed to maximize availability in a Layer 2 LAN. Enhancements to the conventional STP Protocol, such as PVST+, and Port Fast, combined with innovations such as Flex Links Layer 2 interfaces, improve network efficiency. PVST+ allows for Layer 2 load balancing on redundant connections to efficiently use the additional capacity associated with a redundant architecture.

Efficient protocols such as Open Shortest Path First (OPSF), Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol, Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), static routing, and PBR improve network scale; Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM) improves the efficiency of system resource use; and Virtual Route Forwarding Lite (VRFLite) secures data.

Catalyst 3750 Series Switches
For mid-size businesses and enterprise branch offices, the Cisco Catalyst 3750 Series simplifies integration of converged technologies and adapts to changing competitive needs by providing configuration flexibility, ability to manage converged network patterns, and automatic set up of intelligent network functions. Also, the Cisco Catalyst 3750 Series is engineered for high-density Gigabit Ethernet environments and includes a diverse range of switches that meet the connectivity, aggregation, and backbone-interface demands of small or midsized networks.

The Cisco Catalyst 3750 switch has the IP Base or the IP Services image. The IP Base image functions include advanced quality of service (QoS), rate-management, ACLs, and simple static and RIP routing support. The IP Services image provides a broader selection of enterprise-level functions, including advanced built-in IP unicast and multicast routing.

Cisco StackWise technology is a mechanism designed for Gigabit interfaces. Cisco StackWise is intended to react to additions, deletions, and redeployments while providing predictable operation. Cisco StackWise unites up to 9 individual switches into a single functional unit, using custom stack-interconnect cables and software. Each of the switches can be any mix of the Cisco Catalyst 3750 Series and the Catalyst 3750-E Series switches. The stack operates as an individual switching appliance that is directed by a control switch, chosen from one of the member switches. The master switch automatically builds and keeps current all the switching and optional routing tables. A working stack can accept new members or remove existing switches without operational discontinuity.

Ways That Progent Can Help Your Business with Catalyst Series Switches
Progent offers the online or onsite support services of Cisco CCIE-certified consultants who have extensive experience providing Catalyst switch technology solutions for small and medium sized businesses, branches, campuses, data centers, Cloud environments, and service providers. Progent's areas of expertise include Cisco's Catalyst and Nexus families of smart switches and with Cisco's IOS, IOS-XR and NX-OS control software. Support services offered by Progent for Cisco Catalyst Series switches include pilot testing and validation, network analysis and monitoring, network architecture design, upgrades and project management, network virtualization, wired/wireless convergence, network management, performance optimization, problem mitigation, disaster recovery and business continuity planning, and IT security assessment and validation.

Progent's Cisco-certified consultants have broad knowledge of open standards as well as with Cisco-owned technologies related to switching and routing such as BGP, MPLS traffic engineering, Protocol Independent Multicast, VPNs, ISIS, VLANs, FabricPath, VPC, OTV, Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol, Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), Virtual Switching System (VSS), and Locator/ID Separation Protocol (LISP). Progent's infrastructure specialists also have experience with important networking technologies including TCP/IP, IPv4/IPv6, Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP), Routing Information Protocol (RIP), and IGMP. Progent's CISSP-ISSAP certified data security consultants can show you how to develop an enterprise-wide security plan and deploy Cisco Catalyst switches so they provide optimal support for your network security posture.

If you require ultra high density or extremely low latency Cisco switches for an enterprise-class data center, Progent can help your organization to analyze, plan, and implement a migration to Cisco's Nexus family of switches. For information about Progent's support services for Nexus Series switches, refer to Cisco Nexus Switch consulting and support services. Progent can also assist you to integrate Catalyst core switches with Meraki distribution switches. (See Cisco Meraki switch integration consultants.)

To see more details about Progent's consulting support for Cisco networking products, select a topic:

• Introduction to Cisco Network Support
• Fast and Affordable Remote Help from a Cisco CCIE Engineer
• Cisco Firepower Series Firewalls: Configuration and Management Support
• ASA 5500-X Series Firewall with Firepower Services: Setup and Management Expertise
• ASA 5500 Series Firewall Consulting Support
• PIX 500 Firewall Troubleshooting Expertise
• Cisco Routers Consulting Expertise
• Cisco Wireless Deployment Help
• Cisco Aironet Access Points Design Services
• Cisco Small Business Wireless Access Points Consulting Support
• Catalyst 802.11ax Wireless APs Planning, Deployment and Debugging Support
• Cisco Wireless Controllers Support Services
• Cisco Meraki Access Points Engineering Support
• Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM or Unified CM) and CallManager Integration and Troubleshooting
• Cisco Voice over IP (VoIP) Phones and IP Video Phones Consulting and Cisco Wireless VoIP Phone Configuration
• Cisco Jabber Configuration and Troubleshooting Services
• Cisco Nexus Switches Configuration and Maintenance Services
• Meraki MS Switches Support and Troubleshooting Expertise
• Cisco VPN Consulting Help
• SIP and CUBE Infrastructure Solutions: SIP PSTN Trunks and Cisco CUBE Integration Consulting
• Design and Support for Cisco-powered Datacenters
• Data Center Design Services for Internet Service Providers
• Centralized Management Strategies for Cisco-based Environments

To get in touch with Progent about engineering help for Cisco products, call 1-800-993-9400 or see Contact Progent.