Boost Network Availability and Security
As businesses converge voice, data, and video networks, end users increasingly depend on a reliable and predictable network. Network outages and interruptions can result in costly outages that reduce user productivity and business revenue.
With Cisco IOS Software Release12.2(31)SG, the Cisco Catalyst 4500 and 4900 series build on their existing award-winning architecture, delivering more high-availability and security features. These new capabilities ensure that the LAN infrastructure can easily adapt and recover from potential component failures and security threats.
Award-Winning Cisco Catalyst 4500 Series. Read the InfoWorld article
Award-Winning Cisco Catalyst 4900 Series. Read the NetworkWorld article
Key new software features are highlighted below. For detailed information
on all new features, refer to the product bulletins in the Additional
Resources section.
Release date: March 20, 2006
High-Availability Features
Nonstop Forwarding with Stateful Switchover (NSF/SSO): Ensures continuous packet forwarding in a Layer 3 routing environment during supervisor engine switchover. (Catalyst 4500 only)
- Benefits
- Ensures supervisor engine switchover is transparent to users in a Layer 2 or 3 environment
- Nonstop traffic forwarding, including mission-critical applications and voice over IP (VoIP)
- Deployment
- Essential feature for single chassis in closet, aggregation, and commercial core deployments
Web Content Communication Protocol (WCCPv2) Layer 2 Redirection: Enables Cisco Catalyst 4500 switches to transparently redirect content requests to directly connected content engines with a L2/MAC address rewrite.
- Benefits
- Improves user response time and content availability by serving content locally on the LAN instead of the WAN
- Conserves bandwidth by eliminating repetitive transfers of identical information when requested by multiple users
- Deployment
- For transparent caching at the network edge, such as regional and branch sites or Internet edge
Security Features
Network Admission Control (NAC) and 802.1x Enhancements: Helps ensure that endpoints comply with security policies to protect networks against worms and viruses. The new security capabilities are built on the extensive NAC and 802.1x features already available on the Cisco Catalyst 4500 supervisor engines.
- MAC Authentication Bypass: Provides network access to agentless devices such as printers without requiring an 802.1x supplicant
- 802.1x Inaccessible Authentication Bypass: Allows authentication bypass if the authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) server is unreachable or unresponsive for 802.1x authentication services
- 802.1x Unidirectional Controlled Port: Enables the switch to reach a workstation attached to an unauthorized 802.1x switch port using wake-on-LAN (WoL) "magic packets"
- Benefits
- Increases flexibility of NAC and 802.1x deployments
- Supports access to sleeping PCs for software updates push
- Deployment
- Essential for access layer (wiring closet) deployments to authenticate users and devices before accessing the network
Control Plane Policing (CoPP): Protects the supervisor CPU from overloading by rate limiting and filtering out malicious traffic such as denial-of-service (DoS) attack traffic. The Cisco Catalyst 4500 Series implements CoPP in hardware.
- Benefits
- Prevents malicious DoS attack traffic from overwhelming the supervisor CPU
- Ensures network stability and availability and predictable network performance by controlling the traffic to the supervisor CPU
- Deployment
- Should be deployed as standard practice on all switches to ensure high network resiliency
Cisco Catalyst 4500 Series
- Cisco Catalyst 4500 Product Bulletin
- Cisco Catalyst 4500 Series Overview Flash
- Cisco Catalyst 4500 Series Overview presentation
- Cisco Catalyst 4500 Series Switches
Cisco Catalyst 4900 Series