Suggestions on Catalyst Switches

[obsidianreq]

I'm looking to buy a Layer 3 switch with 24-48 gigabit ports, and at least two SFP+ or TwinGig ports would be nice as well.

This can be a used item off eBay, and if it can stack with the WS-C2975GS-48PS-L, all the better.

I want to replace the 4506-E I'm using right now with something a bit more practical. The WS-C2975GS-48PS-L handles my PoE needs, but it doesn't support layer 3 routing.


Thanks!

 

[willglynn]

A C3560E/C3750E (24 or 48 ports, POE or not, 3750s can stack with 3750s) or C4948-10GE (48 ports no POE) would get you layer 3 routing with 2x X2, which can do TwinGig, 10GBASE-SR, 10GBASE-LR inexpensively or SFP+ via expensive adapters. A C4948E would get you layer 3 routing with 4x SFP+.

Do you have requirements other than port counts? These models differ significantly in licensing, routing protocols, noise levels, etc.

 

[Evan]

C4948E-F is similar to the one mentioned above except newer, longer support, and 4 x 10G SFP+ ports, won’t stack I guess and no POE but should be able to find them cheap used.

 

[willglynn]

I mentioned and linked the 4948E, but it's worth clarifying the 4948 situation. There's two and a half base models, with their own part number matrices:

• Catalyst 4948 (no 10 gig) which comes in 4948-E and 4948-S license levels,
• Catalyst 4948-10GE (basically the same but with 2x X2 ports) which comes in 4948-10GE-E and 4948-10GE-S license levels, and
• Catalyst 4948E (different switch with 4x SFP+) which comes as 4948E (front to back cooling) or 4948E-F (back to front cooling) in both 4948E-E/4948E-F-E and 4948E-S/4948E-F-S license levels

 

[rkrenicki]

I would say that the 4948E would fit your requirements the best, and they can be had for around $250 on eBay.

Make sure you are getting an actual 4948E, which are silver in color.. not green/grey. There are a lot of listings for "4948-E" on eBay which are not the same switch.

 

[audio catalyst]

I would say that the 4948E would fit your requirements the best, and they can be had for around $250 on eBay.

Make sure you are getting an actual 4948E, which are silver in color.. not green/grey. There are a lot of listings for "4948-E" on eBay which are not the same switch.

to the best of my knowledge the 4948e cant be stacked though

send from a mobile device, so typo's are to be expected

 

[rkrenicki]

That is true, but you can only stack more 2975s with other 2975s. None of that series have SFP+ as an option.

I would use a 4948E as the primary switch, and connect the 2975 via LACP for the POE needs.

 

[obsidianreq]

I appreciate all the responses!

Yeah, I didn't see that 2975s could only be stacked with 2975s until after I made the post. LACP shouldn't be a problem there since I already have it configured that way with the 4506-E.

Sounds like the 4948E-E should be a sound replacement for the 4506-E.

 

[Terry Kennedy]

A C3560E/C3750E (24 or 48 ports, POE or not, 3750s can stack with 3750s) or C4948-10GE (48 ports no POE) would get you layer 3 routing with 2x X2, which can do TwinGig, 10GBASE-SR, 10GBASE-LR inexpensively or SFP+ via expensive adapters. A C4948E would get you layer 3 routing with 4x SFP+.

C4948-10GE (the original blue one with 2 X2 ports) have a serious design flaw which will cause them to fail randomly ("reboot of death"). There are 2 memory chips on the bottom of the board where they don't get any airflow at all, and they will eventually overheat and fail. The symptom is a switch that powers up, but the status LED stays red (it should change to orange when the ROMMON initializes and green once IOS is running).

I have a much more detailed explanation of the issue here.

 

[Terry Kennedy]

Cisco 4948s and 4948e will get you there. The 4948E has more 10G ports and options to direct air flow, and it has the enterprise services and 10Gpps support.

Note that the original 4948-10GE also has enterprise services:

cisco WS-C4948-10GE (MPC8540) processor (revision 5) with 262144K bytes of memory.
System image file is "bootflash:cat4500-entservicesk9-mz.150-2.SG11.bin"

But I wouldn't recommend that switch because of the issues above.

These days I'm running WS-C4500X-16SFP+ in my core. But that is likely way too expensive / overkill for home users. I'm using a Dell 8024/8024F stack at home, as well as some 4948's that I haven't gotten around to replacing yet.

 

[Evan]

4500X is a nice small core switch, but I can’t help but think if you need more ports and can’t live with the power consumption things like nexus 9372px are a better choice as they may start to be disposed by enterprise.

Only as a datapoint used to run about 60 of the old 4948-10GE and never had any fail in 4-6 years. Still it was a seemingly widely known issue. (Keep in mind those switches were not stacked tight and always had 1u gap for cable management and in a nice cool DC so may have had something to do with it)

 

[Jerry Renwick]

The 4948E switch has fixed configuration with 48 RJ45 ports of 10/100/1000M for downlink and 4 SFP/SFP+ ports of 1/10G for uplink on the front panel. The best advantage is that all these ports can configure themselves to operate at the speed of the attached devices.

 

[audio catalyst]

The 4948E switch has fixed configuration with 48 RJ45 ports of 10/100/1000M for downlink and 4 SFP/SFP+ ports of 1/10G for uplink on the front panel. The best advantage is that all these ports can configure themselves to operate at the speed of the attached devices.

and also notoriously bad powersupplies, plus limited port buffers

send from a mobile device, so typo's are to be expected