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Cisco's Catalyst family of modular and fixed switches provides speed and intelligence at the access, aggregation, and backbone areas of converged IP voice, video, and high bandwidth data networks for businesses that range in size from small businesses and branch offices to multi-campus enterprises and SPs. Progent's Cisco-certified CCIE consultants offer remote and on-premises support for Catalyst family switches to assist you to plan an efficient network architecture that meets your unique business requirements, configure proof-of-concept testing systems, install Catalyst switches, establish and verify a sensible security and compliance plan, automate network management and performance tracking, deliver repair and maintenance services, maximize switch performance, and set up Catalyst's fault-tolerant technology to achieve non-stop operation, Progent can help you to maintain and repair your older Catalyst switches or upgrade smoothly to current versions of Catalyst switches following industry best practices to ensure that you realize the most return from your investment in your network.

The demand for intelligent, fast switching is driven by a combination of relatively new networking patterns whose overall effect is a virtual tsunami of data traffic:

• Cloud networking and a consequent demand for massive virtualization
• The pervasiveness of always-connected mobile devices
• Bandwidth-intensive rich media applications
• Social media for business
• The popularity of Big Data in data analytics

Cloud computing is only financially feasible because of virtualization on a massive scale. Virtualized infrastructures radically reduce costs by permitting aggressively high resource utilization and requiring minimal data center space and energy use. However this also means that comparatively sparse network resources have to support large amounts of traffic. The BYOD paradigm has resulted in a steep rise in the amount of mobile users that must be supported by IT networks, and these users tend to run a great deal of bandwidth-intensive, HD video applications. Social media for business is replacing traditional email as the primary driver for collaboration and is generating a growing requirement for bandwidth. Enterprises who want to stay competitive are resorting to Big Data techniques to mine vast and disparate silos of corporate data, which in turn generates Big Traffic. These trends are fairly new, and put together they cause a serious demand for an advanced class of switches that offer significantly higher speed, control, uptime and ease of management than older solutions were engineered to provide.

Cisco's current lineup of Catalyst switches are designed for the distribution/core layers of enterprise campus environments where office employees must be supported with unvarying high throughput, secure user access control, tight segmentation, application intelligence, and wired/wireless convergence. Catalyst series switches are designed to meet the demand for performance and control with features such as high-density 10G/40G/100G support, switching throughput as high as 11 Tbps for each chassis and double that per switching system, a powerful catalog of tools including Easy Virtual Network to facilitate the creation of VLANs, VSS technology for stateful failover with instant virtual switch restoration and "five nines" (99.999%) uptime, IPv4 and IPv6 support, AVC to maximize network resource usage, and advanced QoS tools for video traffic prioritization.

Cisco Catalyst switches allow organizations of any size to benefit from incorporating smart switching and routing services into their network architecture, creating an environment that can handle current needs, scale to support expected capacity demands, protect vital data, and separate and control tasks to optimize network operations.

Catalyst 2960 Series Switches and 3560-CX Switches
Cisco's Catalyst 2960-CX is a fixed-configuration managed switch that is compact, fanless, power efficient, and includes flexible mounting options. The device incorporates eight 10/100/1000 Ethernet ports and two 1-GE uplinks and has an option for PoE+ power. Cisco's Catalyst 3560-CX appliance is a fixed-port switch housed in a sleek, quiet and energy-efficient enclosure that can be placed virtually anywhere convenient. Versions are offered with eight or 12 10/100/1000 Ethernet ports or with six 10/100/1000 Ethernet ports and two multigigabit Ethernet ports. Up to four uplink ports are available, and Power over Ethernet is also an option.

Cisco's Catalyst 2960-L line consists of value-priced fixed-port managed switches designed for small offices, retail areas, and other environments where space is at a premium. These low-profile switches have eight to 48 GE ports and either two or four Small Form-Factor Pluggable uplink ports. PoE support saves space and fan-free operation for most models does away with noise. RJ-45 connectors handle 10BASE-T, 100BASE-TX, 1000BASE-T and 1000BASE-T SFP-ports.

Cisco Catalyst 2960-X and Catalyst 2960-XR switches improve on the 2690-S family by delivering switching throughput of 216 Gbps and providing Cisco's FlexStack-Plus Stacking by means of a live-swappable module that can combine 8 switches in a stack capable of 80 Gbps of stacking throughput. Cisco Catalyst 2900 Series switches also support NetFlow-Lite for flow-based traffic monitoring. The Catalyst 2960-XR Series switch features L3 dynamic routing, providing the convenience of having a single switch for L2 and L3 routing.

Catalyst 3650 and 3850 Switches
Cisco Catalyst 3650 and Catalyst 3850 series switches are fixed, stackable access devices powered by Cisco's IOS XE control software and incorporating full wireless network controller capability that lets you converge wired and wireless networks on a one device managed by one operating system. Cisco has versions with either 24 or 48 built-in 10/100/1000 Ethernet connections with Power over Ethernet plus, four 1GE or four 10GE uplink connections, and capacity for as many as nine switches per stack. All versions offer modular Quality of Service, fast failover for maximum uptime, software support for IPv4/IPv6 routing, multicast routing, and enhanced security.

Since wireless data traffic is visible at the Catalyst 3000 Series switch, it is possible to identify and prioritize wireless traffic using Cisco's FNF technology along with advanced QoS capabilities for a better wireless user experience and quicker problem isolation. Multigigabit Ethernet switching can handle the high-bandwidth called for by the latest 802.11ac Wave 2 Wi-Fi standard using currently in-place cabling infrastructure. (For information about Progent's support for Cisco's 802.11ac Aironet Wi-Fi technology, and Cisco's Meraki cloud-managed access points, refer to Configuration and Troubleshooting Consulting Services for Cisco Wireless Technology.)

The Cisco Catalyst 3650 Series switch offers stacking throughput as high as 160 Gbps and can control up to 25 Wi-Fi access points and 1000 Wi-Fi users on each switch or stack. The Cisco Catalyst 3850 switch offers stacking performance of 480 Gbps and supports as many as 50 wireless APs and 2000 Wi-Fi users per switch or stack. Cisco Catalyst 3850 SFP Fiber Switches incorporate 12 or 24 1G fiber ports at line rate on every port, offering long distance connections, advanced protection, and an identical wired/wireless experience.

Cisco Catalyst 4500-E Series and Catalyst 4500-X Series Switches
Cisco's Catalyst 4500-E Series and and Cisco Catalyst 4500-X Series switches are designed for campus and distribution deployments where physical space for networking equipment is at a premium. Running Cisco's IOS XE operating system, both the Catalyst 4500-E and Catalyst 4500-X product lines facilitate virtualization by supporting Cisco's Easy Virtual Network and VSS technologies. Network virtualization makes it possible to segment a hardware network into a number of virtual networks (VNs) whose data planes and control planes are logically segregated. This provides the economy, security and compliance, recoverability, and ease of management needed for Cloud computing or other situations where a single infrastructure is used by software and services that need to run in total privacy from each other. Easy Virtual Network streamlines the task of deploying virtual networks and can be expanded to 32 VNs per switch. Easy Virtual Network utilizes features of Multi-virtual routing and forwarding (VRF) and adds new technologies including VNET Tags and a simple technique for duplicating replicating routes between VNs. Virtual Switching System makes it possible to set up Catalyst 4500-E and 4500-X Series platforms to produce non-stop VNs with optimized load balancing.

Catalyst 4500E Switches
Cisco's Supervisor Engine for for the Catalyst 4500-E modular switch includes an integrated wireless controller that works with Cisco's Unified Access solution for wired and wireless convergence. this is the first Cisco Catalyst supervisor engine to permit wired as well as wireless services on a single switch based on IOS XE software. Technologies included are Cisco's FNF technology for capacity planning across both wired and Wi-Fi networks, TrustSec/SGT2 wired/wireless data security, consistent QoS for wired and wireless networks, and the extension of NSF/SSO to cover wireless traffic for enterprise-class high availability.

Offered in chassis with from three to 10 slots, Cisco Catalyst 4500-E switches with Supervisor 8-E can handle as many as 384 1-Gigabit Ethernet ports, up to 192 1GE fiber fiber ports, 96 10-Gigabit Ethernet fiber ports, and eight 10-Gigabit Ethernet uplinks. Cisco's Supervisor Engine 8-E delivers up to 928 Gbps of wired access per system and 20 Gbps of wireless termination capacity. 50 Wi-Fi APs and 2000 wireless users can be supported on each switch, and up to 250 wireless access points and 4000 wireless users are supported in a multi-switch installation without requiring a separate wireless network controller.

Catalyst 4500-X Switches
Cisco's Catalyst 4500-X switches are fixed 10GE aggregation platforms that can provide 800 Gbps of backplane switching capacity per device. The Catalyst 4500-X switch supports up to 32 10GE connections on the baseboard and eight extra 10GE ports on the optional expansion module for a maximum of up to 40 non-blocking 10-Gigabit Ethernet connections. Eight 10GE uplink ports are also available via another module. In addition to providing zero-downtime operation and simple manageability, Cisco's virtual switching system solution on Catalyst 4500-X Series switches offers higher system throughput of as much as 1.6 Tbps by enabling all available capacity across redundant Catalyst 4500-X switches. Additional features include Cisco's FNF technology for traffic analysis, TrustSec security, and wire-rate IPv6 forwarding.

Catalyst 6500 Series and Cisco Catalyst 6800 Series Switches
Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series and Cisco Catalyst 6800 switches are campus backbone switches that share the proven technology of the Cisco Catalyst 6500 family of switches, which first appeared over a dozen years ago and have been steadily enhanced since then. Catalyst 6500 Series and Cisco Catalyst 6800 switches offer identical features and operation, and the modular Catalyst 6807-XL supports the Catalyst 6500 Series Supervisor Engine 2T and the associated family of line cards and modules. This backwards compatibility and program of ongoing improvement preserves your infrastructure investment and permits you to update your network backbone with minimal business disruption or management staff training.

Common features of Catalyst 6500 Series and Catalyst 6800 Series modular switches equipped with the Supervisor Engine 2T include Cisco's Identity Services Engine for simple, single-point management to put in place unvarying policy throughout a distributed environment, VSS Quad Sup SSO (VS4O) technology for 99.999% uptime through multi-level switchover, and Cisco's LISP protocol to support client roaming and device mobility and to streamline network virtualization and transition to IPv6. Additional virtualization features to partition distinct user groups and serve the special security and QoS policy needs of every group include Layer 2 and Layer 3 VPN, complete Multiprotocol Label Switching, EVN, VRF-aware technology for NAT NetFlow, IPv6 over IPv4 GRE Tunnel Protection, and L2 geographic extensions with virtual private LAN services. For converged wired and wireless networking, the WiSM2 for Catalyst 6500 and Catalyst 6800 Series modular switches can manage 1000 wireless access points and 15,000 wireless users.

Catalyst 6500-E Series Switches
The Cisco Catalyst 6500-E line of modular switches are designed for aggregation and enterprise backbone environments that require world-class availability and high concentrations of 10/100/1000 Ethernet, 1 Gigabit Ethernet fiber, or 10 and 40 GE ports. Available versions have three to 13 slots and accept a wide range of interfaces. Integrated service modules enable wireless management, traffic analysis, and security and compliance. Only E-Series models of Cisco's broad line of 6500 switches are compatible with the Supervisor Engine 2T.

The value-priced Cisco Catalyst 6503-E has a 4 rack unit form factor, includes 3 expansion slots, and delivers 180 Gbps of switching capacity per slot. The Cisco Catalyst 6503-E can support up to 97 1-Gigabit Ethernet connections, up to 99 Gigabit Ethernet fiber connections, up to 34 10GE ports, and 8 40GE access ports.

The high-end Cisco Catalyst 6513-E switch has a 19 rack unit, 13-slot chassis and offers as much as 180 Gbps of bandwidth on each slot, providing a system bandwidth as high as 4 Tbps. A Virtual Switching System configured system can deliver 8 Tbps of switching bandwidth. The Cisco Catalyst 6513-E Series switch supports a maximum of 529 10/100/1000 Ethernet ports, up to 534 Gigabit Ethernet fiber ports, up to 180 10GE ports, and 44 40GE access ports.

Cisco Catalyst 6800 Switches
Cisco's Catalyst 6800 Series switches are programmable backbone switches intended to provide best-of-breed 10/40/100 Gigabit Ethernet support. The Cisco Catalyst 6880-X switch is a fixed-configuration, compact device for high-density Ethernet designed for small or medium-size campus backbones. The 6880-X supports up to 2 Tbps capacity and has four slots for port cards. The maximum port concentration on one chassis is 80 10/100/1000 Ethernet ports or 10GE connections or up to 20 40GE access ports. With VSS, these switches can deliver 4 Tbps performance and support as many as 158 1 Gigabit Ethernet ports or 10-Gigabit Ethernet connections or as many as 20 40GE access ports.

The modular Catalyst 6807-XL switch has a 10-rack-unit chassis with 7 slots and supports existing Supervisor Engine 2T cards and service modules. (Two of the slots are reserved for the Supervisor Engine and the other five are for modules.) The Cisco Catalyst 6807-XL switch offers up to 880 Gbps of switching bandwidth per slot and up to 11.4 Tbps of switching capacity while supporting up to 240 10/100/1000 Ethernet access ports or Gigabit Ethernet fiber ports, 80 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports or 20 40GE ports. A two-chassis 6807-XL system configured with VSS is capable of supporting 22.8 Tbps of switching performance, 480 1 Gigabit Ethernet connections or Gigabit Ethernet fiber ports, 160 10GE connections or 40 40-Gigabit Ethernet ports.

End-of-Life Catalyst Series Switches Supported by Progent's Consultants
Progent's Cisco CCIE-certified consultants have extensive backgrounds delivering remote and onsite consulting and troubleshooting expertise for early-generation Catalyst Series switches for which Cisco has announced End of Life or End of Support. These legacy Catalyst switches usually cost more to manage and maintain than contemporary models, provide lower performance and fewer features, and in some cases may subject businesses to compliance and liability risks. Progent can assist you to manage and troubleshoot these legacy switches and can in addition help you to plan and carry out seamless migrations to newer models from the Catalyst line or to devices from Cisco's Nexus portfolio of network switches which build upon Catalyst design experience. Legacy Catalyst switches for which Progent offers support include:

Cisco Catalyst Express 500 Line of Switches
Cisco's Catalyst Express 500 family of Layer 2 switches are intended for businesses with up to 250 workers and deliver the reliability, protection, extensibility, and feature set small companies need at an affordable cost. Power over Ethernet capability makes it simple to add network appliances such as wireless access points and closed-circuit TV cameras.

Models of the Catalyst Express 500 managed switches offer from 8 to 24 10/100/1000BT Ethernet ports as well as optional redundant power supplies with auto fail-over for additional dependability. Interoperation with Cisco access points allows businesses to set up a local wireless environment quickly and easily. The Catalyst Express 500 family offers solid protection against malicious attacks thanks to the Cisco Self-Defending Network technology and Cisco Clean Access agents.

Catalyst 2940 Switch
Cisco Catalyst 2900 Series fixed-configuration, managed 10/100 Ethernet switches provide fundamental small-group connectivity for small to medium-sized businesses. These wire-rate desktop appliances deliver Cisco IOS Software features for basic data, video, and voice control at the edge of the network. The Cisco Catalyst 2940 line of managed switches are small-footprint, stackable devices with eight Ethernet ports plus one built-in Fast or Gbit uplink. They can be installed away from the wiring cabinet in space-constrained areas such as on or under a worker's desk or in a classroom.

Cisco Catalyst 2960-S Switch
The Catalyst 2960-S Series are fixed-configuration switches designed for small businesses and branch offices. Current versions incorporate either 24 or 48 1Gb Ethernet ports, four 1-Gigabit or two 10GE uplink ports, and deliver switching capacity as high as 176 Gbps. Cisco's FlexStack technology allows as many as four Catalyst 2960-S switches to be grouped in a stack to act as a single switch that provides 40 Gbps of stacking performance and that reduces operational expense with single-switch setup. IPv6 First Hop Security capability guards against address theft and other attacks.

Catalyst 3560 Family Switches
The Catalyst 3560 Series is a line of non-modular switches that includes IEEE 802.3af and PoE functionality in 10/100 and Gigabit Ethernet configurations. Cisco's Catalyst 3560 switch is an ideal access-layer switch for small enterprise LAN connectivity or local-offices, combining both 10/100/1000 and PoE options for high efficiency while facilitating the deployment of key applications including VoIP, wireless access, video monitoring, and building management systems. Customers can deploy network-wide smart services such as QoS, rate management, ACLs, multicast administration, and broadband IP routing with the simplicity of conventional LAN switching.

The Cisco Catalyst 3560 switch is equipped with a powerful array of capabilities that permit network expandability and higher availability via IP routing plus a full complement of Spanning Tree Protocol enhancements designed to increase availability in an access Layer network. Enhancements to the standard Spanning Tree Protocol, including Per-VLAN Spanning Tree Plus, and Port Fast, combined with innovations such as Flex Links Layer 2 interfaces, contribute to network uptime. Per-VLAN Spanning Tree Plus supports Layer 2 load balancing on redundant connections to take advantage of the extra bandwidth associated with a redundant architecture.

Important routing mechanisms such as Open Shortest Path First (OPSF), Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP), Border Gateway Protocol, and Policy Based Routing increase system scale; Protocol Independent Multicast improves the efficiency of system resource use; and Virtual Route Forwarding Lite (VRFLite) protects data.

Catalyst 3750 Series Switches
For mid-size businesses and corporate branch offices, Cisco's Catalyst 3750 Series simplifies deployment of unified applications and accommodates changing business needs by providing configuration flexibility, ability to manage converged network traffic, and automatic set up of intelligent network services. In addition, Cisco's Catalyst 3750 Series switch is engineered for high-volume 1000 Ethernet environments and includes a diverse range of switches that address the connectivity, distribution, and backbone-connectivity demands of small or mid-size systems.

The Cisco Catalyst 3750 Series switch has the IP Base or the Services image. The IP Base image functions include industry-leading QoS, rate-management, ACLs, and simple static and RIP routing support. The IP Services image provides a broader selection of enterprise-class functions, including sophisticated built-in IP unicast and multicast routing.

Cisco StackWise technology is a stacking architecture optimized for Gigabit Ethernet. StackWise is intended to respond to additions, deletions, and redeployments while maintaining predictable operation. StackWise combines up to 9 separate switches into a single logical unit, utilizing custom stack-interconnect cables and utilities. Any of the switches can be any combination of Cisco's Catalyst 3750 Series and Cisco's Catalyst 3750-E Series switches. The stack operates as a single switching device that is managed by a master switch, selected from among the member switches. The master switch automatically builds and keeps current all the switching and optional routing tables. A working stack can accommodate new members or delete existing members without operational interruption.

Ways That Progent Can Assist Your Business with Cisco Catalyst Series Switches
Progent offers the remote or on-premises services of CCIE-certified consultants who have broad experience providing Catalyst switch technology support for small and midsize organizations, branches, enterprises, data centers, Cloud environments, and SPs. Progent's practice areas include Cisco's Catalyst and Nexus lines of managed switches and Cisco's IOS, IOS-XR and NX-OS control software. Services available from Progent's experts for Cisco Catalyst Series switches include pilot testing and validation, system analysis and monitoring, network architecture planning, upgrades and project management, virtualization, wired and wireless unification, management automation, performance optimization, problem mitigation, business continuity preparedness, and network security testing and remediation.

Progent's Cisco-certified consultants have broad knowledge of industry standards as well as with proprietary Cisco protocols related to switching and routing including BGP, MPLS, Protocol Independent Multicast, VPNs, STP, virtual LANs, FabricPath, Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), HSRP, VRRP, Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), Virtual Switching System (VSS), and LISP. Progent's network specialists also offer experience with key networking technologies such as TCP/IP protocols, IPv4/IPv6, Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP), Routing Information Protocol, and Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP). Progent's CISSP-ISSAP certified network security consultants can assist you to create a comprehensive security plan and implement Cisco Catalyst switches so they offer optimal enforcement to your security posture.

In case you need ultra high Ethernet density or extremely low latency Cisco switches for an enterprise-class data center, Progent can help your organization to evaluate, design, and implement a transition to Nexus Series switches. For information about Progent's consulting services for Cisco's Nexus switches, see Cisco Nexus Switch consulting offered by Progent. Progent can also help you to integrate Catalyst data center switches with Meraki distribution switches. (See Cisco Meraki switch integration consultants.)

To learn additional information concerning Progent's engineering assistance for Cisco technology, select a topic:

• Introduction to Progent's Cisco Expertise
• Fast Remote Access to a Cisco CCIE Consultant
• Cisco Firepower Firewalls: Integration and Troubleshooting Support
• ASA 5500-X Firewalls with Firepower: Setup and Troubleshooting Support
• Cisco ASA 5500 Firewall Engineering Support
• Cisco PIX Series Firewall Troubleshooting Help
• Cisco Routers Configuration and Troubleshooting Expertise
• Cisco Wireless Deployment Support
• Cisco Aironet Access Points Engineering Services
• Cisco Small Business 100, 300 and 500 Wireless APs Deployment Expertise
• Catalyst 802.11ax Wireless Access Points Solution Design, Configuration and Debugging Consulting
• Cisco Wireless Controllers Integration Consulting
• Cisco Meraki Access Points Design Services
• Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM or Unified CM) and Cisco CallManager Configuration and Technical Support
• Cisco VoIP Phones and IP Video Desktop Phones Consulting Services and Wireless VoIP Phone Integration
• Cisco Jabber and Management Services
• Cisco Nexus Switches Deployment Expertise
• Meraki Switches Configuration and Maintenance Services
• Cisco VPN and Network Security Integration Expertise
• SIP and CUBE Infrastructure Solutions: SIP Trunking and Cisco CUBE Integration Consulting
• Design and Support for Cisco-powered Datacenters
• Network Design Services for ISPs
• Streamlined Management Solutions for Cisco-based Infrastructure