Key Features

• 48 x Gigabit Ethernet ports with line-rate forwarding performance
• 4 x fixed 1 Gigabit Ethernet SFP (Small Form-Factor Pluggable) uplinks
• PoE+ support with a power budget of up to 740W and Perpetual PoE
• Cisco IOS LAN Base or LAN Lite and Cisco IOS IP Lite
• Device management with web UI, over-the-air access via Bluetooth, Command-Line Interface (CLI), Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), and RJ45 or USB console access
• Network management with Cisco Prime, Cisco Network Plug and Play, and Cisco DNA Centre
• Stacking with FlexStack-Plus and FlexStack-Extended
• Layer 3 features with routed access (Open Shortest Path First 'OSPF'), static routing, and Routing Information Protocol (RIP)
• Visibility with Domain Name System as an Authoritative Source (DNS-AS) and Full (Flexible) NetFlow
• Security with 802.1X, Serial Port Analyser (SPAN) and Bridge Protocol Data Unit (BPDU) Guard
• Reliability with higher Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) and Enhanced Limited Lifetime Warranty
  (E-LLW)
• Resiliency with optional dual field-replaceable power supplies

Power Supply

Optional external redundant power supply is supported on the 2960-X. The switch comes with one fixed power supply and an option for an external redundant power supply (Cisco Redundant Power System 'RPS' 2300, sold separately).

Software

The Cisco 2960-X 48-Port switch uses a universal Cisco IOS Software image; the Cisco IOS image automatically configures the LAN Base feature set.
Please note that this switch is tied to a specific feature level; LAN Base cannot be upgraded to IP Lite.

Switch Management

The Cisco 2960-X 48-Port switch supports the following on-device management features:

• Web UI via Cisco Configuration Professional. Configuration Professional provides a user interface for day-zero provisioning, which enables easy onboarding of the switch. Configuration Professional also has an intuitive dashboard for configuring, monitoring, and troubleshooting the switch.
• Bluetooth for over-the-air access. The 2960-X 48-Port switch supports an external Bluetooth dongle that plugs into the USB port and allows a Bluetooth-based RF connection with external laptops and tablets. Laptops and tablets can access the switch CLI using a Telnet or Secure Shell (SSH) client over Bluetooth. The GUI can be accessed over Bluetooth with a browser.

Network Management

The Cisco 2960-X 48-Port switch offers a superior CLI for detailed configuration and administration. It is also supported by the full range of Cisco network management solutions.

• Cisco DNA Centre on the Cisco 2960-X 48-Port switch provides a simple web user interface to enterprise network customers for day-zero plug and play, switch discovery and management, topology visualisation, and software image management.
• Cisco Network Plug and Play is supported using the Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Enterprise Module (APIC-EM) and DNA Centre on the 2960-X 48-Port switch. This provides a simple, secure, unified, and integrated offering for enterprise network customers to ease new branch or campus device rollouts or for provisioning updates to an existing network with a near zero-touch deployment experience.

Cisco Prime Infrastructure provides comprehensive network life-cycle management, including an extensive library of easy-to-use features to automate the initial and day-to-day management of your Cisco network. Cisco Prime technology integrates hardware and software platform expertise and operational experience into a powerful set of workflow-driven configuration, monitoring, troubleshooting, reporting, and administrative tools.

Licences have to be purchased to use the Cisco Prime Infrastructure, Cisco Network Plug and Play, or Cisco DNA Centre network management solution.

Stacking

Cisco FlexStack-Plus provides stacking of up to eight Cisco 2960-X 48-Port switches with the optional FlexStack-Plus module.

The FlexStack-Plus module is hot swappable and can be added to any Cisco 2960-X 48-Port switch with a FlexStack-Plus slot. Switches connected to a stack will automatically upgrade to the stack’s Cisco IOS Software version and transparently join the stack without additional intervention.

To provide investment protection, FlexStack-Plus is backward compatible with FlexStack. Cisco 2960-X 48-Port LAN Base switches equipped with a FlexStack-Plus module can be stacked with Cisco 2960-S Catalyst and 2960-SF LAN Base switches equipped with a FlexStack module.

Cisco FlexStack-Extended enables a long-distance out-of-the-wiring-closet stack option (floor to floor). It allows back-panel stacking of up to eight Cisco 2960-X 48-Port switches. FlexStack-Extended can be added to a Cisco 2960-X 48-Port switch with a back-panel stacking slot. FlexStack-Extended is supported in Cisco IOS 15.2(6)E or later and is available in two module configurations: a fibre module and a hybrid module.

The hybrid module has a copper port that enables short-reach connectivity across a local stack of switches. It provides investment protection and compatibility with FlexStack-Plus through the copper port, while the SFP+ port supports distance stacking. The fibre module has two SFP+ ports supporting long-reach out-of-the wiring-closet stacking.

Cisco FlexStack-Plus, FlexStack-Extended, and Cisco IOS Software offer true stacking, with all switches in a stack acting as a single switch unit. FlexStack-Plus and FlexStack-Extended provide a unified data plane, unified configuration, and single IP address for switch management. The advantages of true stacking include lower total cost of ownership and higher availability through simplified management as well as cross-stack features including EtherChannel, SPAN, and Flex Links.

Application Visibility and Control (AVC)

Full (Flexible) NetFlow and NetFlow Lite are both supported on the Cisco 2960-X 48-Port switch, thereby enabling IT teams to understand the mix of traffic on their network and identify anomalies by capturing and recording specific packet flows. NetFlow Lite supports flexible sampling of the traffic and exports flow data in the NetFlow Version 9 format for analysis on a wide range of Cisco and third-party collectors.

NetFlow Lite is included on this 2960-X 48-Port LAN Base switch.

Flexible NetFlow is the next generation in flow visibility technology, allowing optimisation of the network infrastructure, reducing operation costs, and improving capacity planning and security incident detection with increased flexibility and scalability. The Cisco 2960-X 48-Port switch is capable of up to 8000 flow entries in hardware.

Full (Flexible) NetFlow is included on this 2960-X 48-Port switch and requires a Cisco ONE Foundation licence per switch or a Cisco DNA Essentials licence per switch.

The Domain Name System as an Authoritative Source (DNS-AS) feature (AVC with DNS-AS) provides a centralised means of controlling the identification and classification of trusted network traffic in an organisation. It accomplishes this by using network metadata stored in a DNS server that is authoritative to the domain in question to identify applications, and Modular Quality-of-Service (QoS) CLI (MQC) to classify the corresponding traffic and apply suitable policies.

DNS-AS is included on this 2960-X 48-Port switch and requires a Cisco ONE Foundation licence per switch or a Cisco DNA Essentials licence per switch.

Layer 3 Features

The Cisco hardware architecture delivers the following high-performance IP routing features in the 2960-X 48-Port switch:

• Advanced IP unicast routing protocols (OSPF for Routed Access) are supported for load balancing and constructing scalable LANs. IPv6 routing (OSPFv3) is supported in hardware for maximum performance.
• Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM) for IP multicast is supported, including PIM Sparse Mode (PIM SM), PIM Dense Mode (PIM-DM), PIM Sparse-Dense Mode, and Source Specific Multicast (SSM).
• Policy-Based Routing (PBR) allows superior control by facilitating flow redirection regardless of the routing protocol configured (for both IPv4 and IPv6).
• IP unicast routing protocols (static and RIPv1 and v2) are supported for network routing applications.

Intelligent PoE+

IEEE 802.3af PoE and IEEE 802.3at PoE+ (up to 30W per port) are both supported on the 2960-X 48-Port switch, to lower the total cost of ownership for deployments that incorporate Cisco IP phones, Cisco Aironet wireless access points, or other standards-compliant PoE and PoE+ end devices. PoE removes the need to supply wall power to PoE-enabled devices and eliminates the cost of adding electrical cabling and circuits that would otherwise be necessary in IP phone and WLAN deployments. The Cisco 2960-X 48-Port PoE power allocation is dynamic, and power mapping scales up to a maximum of 740W of PoE+ power.

Perpetual PoE is supported on the 2960-X 48-Port switch. With Perpetual PoE, the PoE+ power is maintained during a switch reload. This is important for critical endpoints such as medical devices and for Internet of Things (IoT) endpoints such as PoE-powered lights, so that there is no disruption during a switch reboot.

Enhanced QoS

The Cisco 2960-X 48-Port switch offers intelligent traffic management that keeps everything flowing smoothly. Flexible mechanisms for marking, classification, and scheduling deliver superior performance for data, voice, and video traffic, all at wire speed. Primary QoS features include:

• Up to eight (8) egress queues per port and strict priority queuing so that the highest-priority packets are serviced ahead of all other traffic.
• Shaped Round Robin (SRR) scheduling and Weighted Tail Drop (WTD) congestion avoidance.
• Flow-based rate limiting and up to 256 aggregate or individual policers per port.
• 802.1p Class of Service (CoS) and Differentiated Services Code Point (DSCP) classification, with marking and reclassification on a per-packet basis by source and destination IP address, MAC address, or Layer 4 TCP/UDP port number.
• Cross-stack QoS to allow QoS to be configured across a stack of 2960-X 48-Port switches.
• Cisco Committed Information Rate (CIR) function, providing bandwidth in increments as low as 8 Kbps.
• Rate limiting based on source and destination IP address, source and destination MAC address, Layer 4 TCP/UDP information, or any combination of these fields, using QoS ACLs (IP ACLs or MAC ACLs), class maps, and policy maps.

Scalability

Switching Database Manager (SDM) templates for LAN Base licences allow the administrator to automatically optimise the Ternary Content-Addressable Memory (TCAM) allocation to the desired features based on deployment-specific requirements, including MAC, routing, security, and QoS scalability numbers, depending on the type of template used in the switch.

Redundancy and Resiliency

The Cisco 2960-X 48-Port switch offers a number of redundancy and resiliency features to prevent outages and help ensure that the network remains available:

• Cross-stack EtherChannel provides the ability to configure Cisco EtherChannel technology across different members of the stack for high resiliency.
• Flex Links provide link redundancy with a convergence time of less than 100 milliseconds.
• IEEE 802.1s/w Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol (RSTP) and Multiple Spanning Tree Protocol (MSTP) provide rapid spanning-tree convergence independent of spanning-tree timers and also offer the benefit of Layer 2 load balancing and distributed processing. Stacked units behave as a single spanning-tree node.
• Per-VLAN Rapid Spanning Tree (PVRST+) allows rapid spanning-tree re-convergence on a per-VLAN spanning-tree basis, without requiring the implementation of spanning-tree instances.
• Switch-port auto-recovery (Error Disable) automatically attempts to reactivate a link that is disabled because of a network error.
• Power redundancy with an optional external redundant power supply ('RPS', sold separately).

Operational Efficiency

Cisco Catalyst SmartOperations is a comprehensive set of capabilities that simplify LAN planning, deployment, monitoring, and troubleshooting. Deploying SmartOperations tools reduces the time and effort required to operate the network and lowers Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

• Cisco AutoConfig services determine the level of network access provided to an endpoint based on the type of device. This feature also permits hard binding between the end device and the interface.
• Cisco Smart Install services enable minimal-touch deployment by providing automated Cisco IOS Software image installation and configuration when new switches are connected to the network. This enables network administrators to remotely manage Cisco IOS Software image installs and upgrades.
• Cisco Auto SmartPorts services enable automatic configuration of switch ports as devices connect to the switch, with settings optimised for the device type, for zero-touch port-policy provisioning.
• Cisco Auto-QoS automatically configures QoS, allowing the switch to manage QoS policies based on traffic types, resulting in zero-touch traffic engineering. Auto-QoS supports eight egress queues.
• Cisco Smart Troubleshooting is an extensive array of diagnostic commands and system health checks within the switch, including Smart Call Home. The Cisco Generic Online Diagnostics (GOLD) and online diagnostics on switches in live networks help predict and detect failures faster.

Operational Simplicity

• Cisco AutoSecure provides a single-line CLI to enable baseline security features (Port Security, DHCP snooping, DAI). This feature simplifies security configurations.
• DHCP auto configuration of multiple switches through a boot server eases switch deployment.
• Stacking master configuration management with Cisco FlexStack-Plus and Cisco FlexStack-Extended technology helps ensure that all switches are automatically upgraded when the master switch receives a new software version. Automatic software version checking and updating help ensure that all stack members have the same software version.
• No configuration is required to use Cisco FlexStack-Plus and Cisco FlexStack-Extended modules for stacking (Plug and Play).
• Auto-negotiation on all ports automatically selects half or full-duplex transmission mode to optimise bandwidth.
• Dynamic Trunking Protocol (DTP) facilitates dynamic trunk configuration across all switch ports.
• Port Aggregation Protocol (PAgP) automates the creation of Cisco Fast EtherChannel groups or Gigabit EtherChannel groups to link to another switch, router, or server.
• Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) allows the creation of Ethernet channelling with devices that conform to IEEE 802.3ad. This feature is similar to Cisco EtherChannel technology and PAgP.
• Automatic Media-Dependent Interface Crossover (MDIX) automatically adjusts transmit and receive pairs if an incorrect cable type (crossover or straight-through) is installed.
• Unidirectional Link Detection Protocol (UDLD) and Aggressive UDLD allow unidirectional links caused by incorrect fibre-optic wiring or port faults to be detected and disabled on fibre-optic interfaces.
• SDM templates for access, routing, and VLAN deployment allow the administrator to easily maximise memory allocation to the desired features based on deployment-specific requirements.
• Local Proxy ARP works in conjunction with Private VLAN Edge to minimise broadcasts and maximise available bandwidth.
• VLAN1 minimisation allows VLAN1 to be disabled on any individual VLAN trunk.
• Smart Multicast with Cisco FlexStack-Plus and FlexStack-Extended technology allows the 2960-X 48-Port switch to offer greater efficiency and support for more multicast data streams such as video by putting each data packet onto the backplane only once.
• IGMP Snooping for IPv4 and IPv6 and Multicast Listener Discovery (MLD) v1 and v2 Snooping provide fast client joins and leaves of multicast streams and limit bandwidth-intensive video traffic to only the requesters.
• Multicast VLAN Registration (MVR) continuously sends multicast streams in a multicast VLAN while isolating the streams from subscriber VLANs for bandwidth and security reasons.
• Per-port broadcast, multicast, and unicast storm control prevents faulty end stations from degrading overall system performance.
• Voice VLAN simplifies telephony installations by keeping voice traffic on a separate VLAN for easier administration and troubleshooting.
• Cisco VLAN Trunking Protocol (VTP) supports dynamic VLANs and dynamic trunk configuration across all switches.
• Remote Switch Port Analyser (RSPAN) allows administrators to remotely monitor ports in a Layer 2 switch network from any other switch in the same network.
• For enhanced traffic management, monitoring, and analysis, the embedded Remote Monitoring (RMON) software agent supports four RMON groups (history, statistics, alarms, and events).
• Layer 2 trace route eases troubleshooting by identifying the physical path that a packet takes from source to destination.
• Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) reduces the cost of administering software upgrades by downloading from a centralised location.
• Network Time Protocol (NTP) provides an accurate and consistent timestamp to all intranet switches.

Power Management

As the greenest switch in the industry, the 2960-X 48-Port switch offers a range of industry-leading features for effective energy efficiency and energy management:

Switch Hibernation Mode (SHM) is an industry first and is available on the 2960-X 48-Port switch. This feature puts the switch in ultra-low-power mode during periods of non-operation such as nights or weekends. SHM can be scheduled using Cisco EnergyWise compliant management software.

IEEE 802.3az EEE (Energy Efficient Ethernet) enables ports to dynamically sense idle periods between traffic bursts and quickly switch the interfaces into a low-power idle mode, reducing power consumption.

Cisco EnergyWise policies can be used to control the power consumed by PoE-powered endpoints, desktop and data-centre IT equipment, and a wide range of building infrastructure. Cisco EnergyWise technology is included on this 2960-X 48-Port switch.