Is cisco 2950 or 3548xl switch a layer 3 switch?

[richard268]

It confues me at the moment whether cisco 2950 switch or 3548xl is a layer 3 switch. (Do they have routing function?)

I can put the following commands into 3548xl switch:

int vlan 1

ip address 10.1.1.1 255.255.255.0

no shut

int vlan 10

ip address 10.2.1.1 255.255.255.0

no shut

When I do the "show int vlan 10", it says it is administratively shut down.

but int vlan 1 is up. so after I shut down int vlan 1, then do 'no shutdown' in interface vlan 10, int vlan 10 is up. But when I go back to do 'no shutdown' in int vlan 1, it says the interface is up, but the protocol is down when I do 'show int vlan 1'.

Also I cannot input the following commands into the 3548xl switches.

vtp mode server

vlan database

But accordin to cisco documentation, I should be able to do the above commands without problems.

Is it a IOS version problem? or maybe my 3548xl donot have enough RAM ? or maybe my understanding is wrong? (I think that 3548 and 2950 can do the vlan routing by themselves, like cisco 4000 ? )So do I need an external router to do the vlan routing for 3548xl or 2950 switches? but if that is the case, why can I input those commands in?)

Thanks very much for your reply.

Regards

Richard

[rjackson]

No they are layer 2 devices. The int vlan# is for configuring the management ip address and vlan for the switch. By default it is vlan1 but you can create int vlan10 (or whatever) and give it an address in vlan 10's address space. Then in inteface config mode on that vlan interface enter "management". It will automatically shut the current mamangement vlan interface (vlan1) and no shut the one you specify as the management int. To change it back to vlan1 go into vlan 1 and enter management. This is further confused by a new release on the 2950 that says "no ip address" on each physical interface. My cisco rep says thats just a side effect of supporting the 2950 and 3550 with the same code. The 2950 will not use ip addresses on the physical interfaces.