3560s and 2950s

[pintomark]

I am working on a paper for school and one of my instructor is asking what would be the point of using a 3560 and two 2950 switches to support a 3 floor installation. I had read somewhere on this site that using the two together had benefits, however I lost my link. Any ideas?

[muradmahiuddin]

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/switches/lan/catalyst3750/software/release/12.2_46_se/release/notes/OL16489.html#wp538316

It is not wise to use 2950 anymore as it has reached to EOS.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/switches/ps5718/ps628/prod_end-of-life_notice0900aecd806ea1da.html

[pintomark]

ok, regardless of the model. what would be the benefit?

[muradmahiuddin]

The benefit relies on what you want to achieve.

If it is all about building a LAN across 3 different floors than there is no difference.

[Jon Marshall]

Mark

It's difficult to answer without knowing the context your instructor is asking the question in.

The main reason i can think of is that the 2950/60 switches are L2 only whereas the 3560 is L3. The L2 switches will be less expensive to purchase and you could use the 3560 to route between all vlans on all floors.

Having the 3560 allows you to segment the network into separate vlans but still have these vlans communicate with each other.

Obviously you could do the same with 3 x 3560 but it would be more expensive.

Jon

[ccannon88567]

I agree,

the most obvious thing to jump to mind is that you can use the 3560 to route between the vlans for the floors. In affect you are using a collapsed Core/Distribution layer with a 3560 and an access layer with the 2950's.

Although Ideally you would want 1 2950's ( 3 in total) per floor and 1 3560/3750 to do the routing and other distruntion layer functions.

Hope this helps you out.

[glen.grant]

It's as everyone had indicated,the L3 functions would be handled by 3560 and you would run trunks to the other floors so you could place the defined vlans onto the 2950 and all routing would be done by the 3560 . The 2950 is used because it is a relatively inexpensive L2 device and a lot less expensive than using 3 3560's which is also possible as Jon indicated because you just turn off ip routing on a 3560 and you have a expensive L2 device.

[pintomark]

Thanks Jon