Cisco Catalyst 2960-L Switches: 9 Key Features

Cisco Catalyst 2960-L Switches have PoE+, Layer 2 features into a slim and fanless body, bringing flexibility and reducing cables for places like hotels and dorms.

The leader in the network industry, Cisco Systems, is proud because of the great switches it produces, especially with the Catalyst family. The Catalyst family is a flagship in the switching field and one of the world's oldest and most known switching platforms. Today this family of switches is getting even better with the joining of a new member, the Cisco Catalyst 2960-L.

The header of the Cisco Catalyst 2960-L product page on the Cisco website is: Get a next-generation switch at a great value. in our opinion, this sentence is short yet represents a perfect description of this exciting series, so Why did Cisco release this series? And why are they considering it as a next-generation switch?

First of all, the primary purpose of this series is to fill the gap between the family's smallest member, the 2960-X, which is an enterprise-grade switch, and the Small Business family of switches. Someone may mention the 2960-Plus switches, but those are Fast Ethernet switches and are out of the equation.

The new Cisco Catalyst 2960-L series switches can be considered the younger brother of the 2960-X series. This younger member can better fit customers who seek an L2 enterprise-grade switch but with a limited budget.

So here is the critical question: Are they just smaller and cheaper switches with humble capabilities? Or are they really next-generation switches?

Cisco Catalyst 2960-L Series Switches pack PoE+ and basic Layer 2 features into a slim and fanless body. They bring flexibility and reduce cables for places like retail outlets and office branches with limited space or out-of-wiring closet requirements.

The Catalyst 2960-L Series is ideally suited for hotels or school buildings with less than 50 users on a floor, providing 802.1X authentication to access points. Designed for operational simplicity to lower TCO, the Catalyst 2960-L Series enables energy-efficient business operation, allows zero-touch deployment across WAN, and features a web user interface for management simplicity. 

The Catalyst 2960-L Smart Managed switches provide the reliability and speed of enterprise-grade technology at a low cost, with configuration and management via a simple, on-premise web-based interface. If you are still not satisfied with those features, let's explore each of them separately.

Features of Cisco 2960-L

1. Network Management

The Cisco Catalyst 2960-L Series Switches offer a superior CLI for detailed configuration and administration. The switches are also supported by the full range of Cisco network management solutions, including:

• Cisco DNA Center (main management point in Cisco Digital Network Architecture DNA)
• Cisco Prime Infrastructure
• Cisco Network Plug and Play, which is supported using the Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Enterprise Module (APIC-EM), and
• DNA Center on Cisco Catalyst 2960-L Series Switches

This network management provides a simple, secure, unified, and integrated offering for enterprise network customers. It eases new branch or campus device rollouts or provisioning updates to an existing network with a near-zero-touch deployment experience.

2. Virtual Stacking

It enables the administrators to manage a group of switches as a single entity. Up to eight switches can be configured and managed using a single IP address. 

Switches in a virtual stack can be configured from a single switch, the commander switch. All of them in a virtual stack can be managed using the CLI, SNMP, or web UI. Switches in the virtual stack can also be configured and managed over the air via Bluetooth from a commander switch using the web UI. 

Virtual stacking also offers redundancy wherein a standby commander can manage and configure the stack if the primary master fails.

3. Intelligent PoE+

Cisco Catalyst 2960-L Switches support both IEEE 802.3af PoE and IEEE 802.3at PoE+ (up to 30W per port) to deliver a lower 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. 

In those switches, the PoE power allocation is dynamic, and power mapping scales up to 370W of PoE+ power. Intelligent power management allows flexible power allocation across all ports. With Perpetual PoE, the PoE+ power is maintained during a switch reload. This is important for critical endpoints such as medical devices and the Internet of Things IoT endpoints such as PoE-powered lights so that there is no disruption during a switch reboot.

4. Network Security

Cisco Catalyst 2960-L Switches provide a range of security features to limit access to the network and mitigate threats, including:

• Comprehensive 802.1Xfeatures to control access to the network with flexible authentication
• 802.1X monitor mode
• RADIUS change of authorization, and
• Multidomain authentication allows an IP phone and a PC to authenticate on the same switch port while being placed on appropriate voice and data VLANs. 
• Those switches also support IEEE 802.1x User Distribution which enables the network to load-balance users with the same group name across multiple VLANs.

In addition to those 802.1X-related features, Cisco 2960-L switches offer enterprise-class security features such as:

• AAA command authorization in plug-and-play (PnP) to enable seamless PnP provisioning
• ACACS+ and RADIUS authentication
• Web Authentication redirection
• MAC authentication bypass, and
• Web auth with downloadable ACLs

All those features can ensure a very secure and robust network.

5. Bluetooth connection

For over-the-air access, the switches support an external Bluetooth dongle that plugs into the USB port on the switch 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.

6. Basic Layer 3 Features

Although Cisco 2960-L is considered a Layer 2 switch, it can offer some Layer 3 features, such as static routing and RIP for both IPv4 and IPv6 protocols.

7. Redundancy and Resiliency

It includes switch-port auto recovery (error disable) that automatically attempts to reactivate a link that is disabled because of a network error and Link-State Tracking, which binds the link state of multiple interfaces. Therefore, network connectivity is transparently changed to the secondary interface when the link is lost on the primary interface.

8. Enhanced QoS features

These offer intelligent traffic management that keeps everything flowing smoothly. Flexible marking, classifying, and scheduling mechanisms deliver superior performance for data, voice, and video traffic, all at wire speed. Primary QoS features include up to eight egress queues and two thresholds per port, ingress policing, trust boundary, Shaped Round Robin (SRR) scheduling, Weighted Tail Drop (WTD) congestion avoidance, and Auto-QoS which simplifies the deployment of QoS features.

9. Warranty

Cisco Catalyst 2960-L Switches come with an Enhanced Limited Lifetime Warranty (E-LLW). The E-LLW provides the same terms as the Cisco standard limited lifetime warranty but adds next-business-day delivery of replacement hardware, where available, and 90 days of 8x5 Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC) support.

Final Thoughts

The Cisco 2960-L series includes many models to fit the different needs of different customers, including 8/16/24/48 port models, fanless models, PoE, and PoE+ models. We recommend you visit our Catalyst 2960-L portfolio to see the available models. CONTACT US for any questions or bulk orders.