Virtual ethernet interface

Is it not for management of the device? What is the interface referred/named as?

I'm guessing you are talking about the vlan interfaces for management or routing, but not sure. Please paste where you are seeing this. Here is the interface configuration guide for the 2960s:

24 fast ethernet interfaces 2 gigabit ethernet interfaces 1 virtual ethernet interface

It says that on all of the IOS based switches that I have in my environment. I'm fairly certain this is normal, and it is most likely just saying that it supports virtual interfaces. However, I'm fairly certain that it supports more than one, but perhaps it just says 1 to signify the functionality. I just checked a 3550, 3560, etc, and all say 1 virtual interface.

Guess it could be a console connection too. Either way, its perfectly normal.

Very well could be that...in fact sounds like it is. All of my switches are just 'dumb' and l3 is owned on other 6500s and just trunked over. The only actual virtual interface is of course for management. Therefore I'll bet that is it...just never noticed it before.

On a 3750, I noticed that, after configuring a new vlan (different from vlan

1), the message changed to "2 virtual ethernet interfaces" (I assigned an IP address to the vlan and did "no shutdown" on it). So, I guess it's the number of active vlans (I may also be wrong, of course).

The answer is that it is a management interface for the switch.

If you do not assign an IP address to the ethernet switch, how else will you remotely connect to it? Where would you assign it? To a physical ethernet switchport? No, you assign it to a vlan interface that is available behind any ethernet port assigned to that VLAN.

Example: interface vlan 1 shutdown interface vlan 5 description *** Management IP Address *** ip address 192.168.186.241 255.255.255.192 no shutdown end