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Catalyst 2960 Switch Software Configuration Guide
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Chapter 1 Overview
Features
Performance Features
• Autosensing of port speed and autonegotiation of duplex mode on all switch ports for optimizing
bandwidth
• Automatic-medium-dependent interface crossover (auto-MDIX) capability on 10/100 and
10/100/1000 Mbps interfaces and on 10/100/1000 BASE-TX SFP module interface that enables the
interface to automatically detect the required cable connection type (straight-through or crossover)
and to configure the connection appropriately
• Support for up to 9000 bytes for frames that are bridged in hardware and up to 2000 bytes for frames
that are bridged by software
• IEEE 802.3x flow control on all ports (the switch does not send pause frames)
• EtherChannel for enhanced fault tolerance and for providing up to 8 Gbps (Gigabit EtherChannel)
or 800 Mbps (Fast EtherChannel) full-duplex bandwidth among switches, routers, and servers
• Port Aggregation Protocol (PAgP) and Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) for automatic
creation of EtherChannel links
• Forwarding of Layer 2 packets at Gigabit line rate
• Per-port storm control for preventing broadcast, multicast, and unicast storms
• Port blocking on forwarding unknown Layer 2 unknown unicast, multicast, and bridged broadcast
traffic
• Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) snooping for IGMP Versions 1, 2, and 3 for
efficiently forwarding multimedia and multicast traffic
• IGMP report suppression for sending only one IGMP report per multicast router query to the
multicast devices (supported only for IGMPv1 or IGMPv2 queries)
• IGMP snooping querier support to configure switch to generate periodic IGMP General Query
messages
• Multicast VLAN registration (MVR) to continuously send multicast streams in a multicast VLAN
while isolating the streams from subscriber VLANs for bandwidth and security reasons
• IGMP filtering for controlling the set of multicast groups to which hosts on a switch port can belong
• IGMP throttling for configuring the action when the maximum number of entries is in the IGMP
forwarding table
• IGMP configurable leave timer to configure the leave latency for the network.
• Switch Database Management (SDM) templates for allocating system resources to maximize
support for user-selected features
Management Options
• An embedded device manager—The device manager is a GUI that is integrated in the software
image. You use it to configure and to monitor a single switch. For information about launching the
device manager, see the getting started guide. For more information about the device manager, see the
switch online help.
• Network Assistant—Network Assistant is a network management application that can be
downloaded from Cisco.com. You use it to manage a single switch, a cluster of switches, or a
community of devices. For more information about Network Assistant, see Getting Started with
Cisco Network Assistant, available on Cisco.com.
