Layer 3 switching and routing?

[0r8it]

Hi there, hope someone can help..

I've a Layer 3 switch- a Cisco 2950 EMI. Great switch.

I have been doing intervlan routing between this switch and a 1700 series router. I'm confident configuring this, and it all works very well.

However, as the switch is Layer 3 in its own right, should it not be possible to generate a configuration on the switch itself which does this, and remove the router from the situation?

I'm not familiar with L3 switches. Would the config be pretty straightforward?

regards,

0r8it

[ankurbhasin · Accepted solution]

Hi 0r8it,

2950 EMI switch is a pure layer 2 switch and not at all a layer 3 switch.

Layer 3 switches are like 3550,3560 and 3750 etc etc but the one you are having is layer 2 so intervlan routing is not possible alone on this switch so only one logical interface can be up at a time to assign an ip address just for management purposes.

Incase you get switch like 3550 you can configure multiple logical interfaces and assign an ip address on each logical interface and have intervlan routing work.

Like

int vlan 2

ip address <>

int vlan 3

ip address <>

ip routing

This will start intervlan routing on layer 3 switches but yours is layer 2 so its not possible at all.

HTH

Ankur

[0r8it]

Ankur, thats tremendous, thanks for your answer.

I had assumed that, having an EMI image, it had the layer 3 capabilities I had seen in other L3 switches- but now I recall that other switch to be a 3550.

best regards,

0r8it

[glen.grant]

As the previous poster indicated , the 2950 is layer 2 only and cannot do any type of routing , you need a external router or l2/l3 switch in order to route between multiple vlans on this switch.