Product Overview

The Cisco^® Catalyst^® 2960-S and 2960 Series Switches are the leading Layer 2 edge, providing improved ease of use, highly secure business operations, improved sustainability, and a borderless network experience. The Catalyst 2960-S Series Switches include new FlexStack switch stacking capability with 1 and 10 Gigabit connectivity, and Power over Ethernet Plus (PoE+) with the Cisco Catalyst 2960 Series Switches offering Fast Ethernet access connectivity and PoE capabilities. TheCisco Catalyst 2960-S and 2960 Series are fixed-configuration access switches designed for enterprise, midmarket, and branch office networks to provide lower total cost of ownership. The Cisco Catalyst 2960-S is shown in Figure 1, and the Cisco Catalyst 2960 Series Switches are shown in Figure 2.

What’s new for the Cisco Catalyst 2960-S Series Switches with LAN Base Software:

● 10 and 1 Gigabit Ethernet uplink flexibility with Small Form-Factor Pluggable Plus (SFP+), providing business continuity and fast transition to 10 Gigabit Ethernet

● 24 or 48 ports of Gigabit Ethernet desktop connectivity

● Cisco FlexStack stacking module with 20 Gbps of throughput, allowing ease of operation with single configuration and simplified switch upgrade

● PoE+ with up to 30W per port that allows you to support the latest PoE+ capable devices

● Power supply options, with 740W or 370W fixed power supplies for PoE+ switches are available

● USB storage for file backup, distribution, and simplified operations

● A wide range of software features to provide ease of operation, highly secure business operations, sustainability, and a borderless network experience

● Limited lifetime hardware warranty, including next-business-day replacement with 90-day service and support

The Cisco Catalyst 2960 Series Switches with LAN Base Software offer the following:

● Dual-purpose uplinks for Gigabit Ethernet uplink flexibility, allowing use of either a copper or fiber uplink; each dual-purpose uplink port has one 10/100/1000 Ethernet port and one SFP-based Gigabit Ethernet port, with one port active at a time

● 24 or 48 ports of Fast Ethernet desktop connectivity

● PoE configurations with up to 15.4W per port

● A wide range of software features to provide ease of operation, highly secure business operations, sustainability, and a borderless networking experience

● Limited lifetime hardware warranty

Switch Configurations

Table 1 shows the configuration information for the Catalyst 2960-S Series Switches with LAN Base Software, and Table 2 shows the configuration information for the Catalyst 2960 Series Switches with LAN Base Software.

Table 1. Configurations of Cisco Catalyst 2960-S Series Switches with LAN Base Software

Table 2. Configurations of Cisco Catalyst 2960 Series Switches with LAN Base Software

Cisco FlexStack Stacking

Cisco FlexStack stacking with a hot-swappable module and IOS software provides true stacking, all switches in a stack act as a single switch unit. The Cisco FlexStack provides a unified data plane, unified configuration, and single IP address management for a group of switches. The advantages of true stacking are lower total cost of ownership through simplified management and higher availability. Cisco FlexStack supports cross-stack features including Etherchannel, SPAN and FlexLink technology. A stack module can be added to any Catalyst 2960-S switch with LAN Base software to quickly upgrade the switch to make it stack capable, and the switch added to the stack will upgrade to the correct Cisco IOS^® Software version and transparently become a stack member. Figure 3 shows the FlexStack stacking module for the Catalyst 2960-S.

Power over Ethernet Plus PoE+

In addition to PoE 802.3af, the Cisco Catalyst 2960-S Series Switches support PoE+ (IEEE 802.3at standard), which provides up to 30W of power per port. The Cisco Catalyst 2960-S and 2960 Series Switches can provide a lower total cost of ownership for deployments that incorporate Cisco IP phones, Cisco Aironet^® wireless LAN (WLAN) access points, or any IEEE 802.3af-compliant end device. PoE removes the need for wall power to each PoE-enabled device and eliminates the cost for additional electrical cabling and circuits that would otherwise be necessary in IP phone and WLAN deployments. Table 3 shows the power supply combinations required for different PoE needs.