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Layer 2-4 Services

The Cisco Catalyst Switch Guide says that the 2950 offers Layer 2 switching with intelligent Layer 2 - 4 services.

I did a search of the Cisco site for "layer 2-4 services" (including quotes) and 21 results were returned but I could not find how Cisco defines this. What does this mean exactly?

Reply to
Bob Simon
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OSI Model, Switching (L2), Routing (L3), Transport (L4) which is TCP/ UDP.

Reply to
Trendkill

I would suppose that the layer 2-4 "services" amount to Quality of service that can be "controlled" depending on values in fields in the various layers' packet headers.

e.g. I think you can do QoS with the 2960 on both the L2 COS field and the L3 DSCP field.

Of course you can manupulate the values in those fields too.

Remember that you are reading *marketing* material. It is carefully designed to sound good without promising anything. This is I would guess the exact reason that you cannot figure it out. To be fair it seems to me a very tough job writing such material so that the functions are described and yet not over described at all. It only needs a single function that is claimed to work but that is not in fact present for the supplier to get in a lot of trouble.

"What does this mean exactly?" How long is a piece of string?

Take care.

Reply to
bod43

Thanks for your entertaining reply. And I appreciate the QoS info. But since I want a lab switch that'll do routing between VLANs, the

2900 doesn't seem like it meets that need. I guess I need a longer piece of string.

I'm having some difficulty differentiating the 3524 and 3548 from the

3550 line. Can you enlighten me? Is there something equivalent to the Cisco Router Guide for switches that compares features?
Reply to
Bob Simon

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