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Catalyst 2960 and 2960-S Switch Software Configuration Guide
OL-8603-09
Chapter 1 Overview
Network Configuration Examples
Design Concepts for Using the Switch
As your network users compete for network bandwidth, it takes longer to send and receive data. When
you configure your network, consider the bandwidth required by your network users and the relative
priority of the network applications that they use.
Table 1-1 describes what can cause network performance to degrade and how you can configure your
network to increase the bandwidth available to your network users.
Bandwidth alone is not the only consideration when designing your network. As your network traffic
profiles evolve, consider providing network services that can support applications for voice and data
integration, multimedia integration, application prioritization, and security. Table 1-2 describes some
network demands and how you can meet them.
Table 1-1 Increasing Network Performance
Network Demands Suggested Design Methods
Too many users on a single network
segment and a growing number of
users accessing the Internet
• Create smaller network segments so that fewer users share the bandwidth, and use
VLANs and IP subnets to place the network resources in the same logical network
as the users who access those resources most.
• Use full-duplex operation between the switch and its connected workstations.
• Increased power of new PCs,
workstations, and servers
• High bandwidth demand from
networked applications (such as
e-mail with large attached files)
and from bandwidth-intensive
applications (such as
multimedia)
• Connect global resources—such as servers and routers to which the network users
require equal access—directly to the high-speed switch ports so that they have
their own high-speed segment.
• Use the EtherChannel feature between the switch and its connected servers and
routers.
Table 1-2 Providing Network Services
Network Demands Suggested Design Methods
Efficient bandwidth usage for
multimedia applications and
guaranteed bandwidth for critical
applications
• Use IGMP snooping to efficiently forward multimedia and multicast traffic.
• Use other QoS mechanisms such as packet classification, marking, scheduling,
and congestion avoidance to classify traffic with the appropriate priority level,
thereby providing maximum flexibility and support for mission-critical, unicast,
and multicast and multimedia applications.
• Use MVR to continuously send multicast streams in a multicast VLAN but to
isolate the streams from subscriber VLANs for bandwidth and security reasons.