2950 vs 3560 for VoIP

[jneiberger]

Other than providing power, is the 2950 missing anything that a PoE-capable 3560 can provide with regard to Cisco IP telephony? We're considering a Cisco IPT deployment and most of our sites already have 2950 switches. I believe that the 2950 is capable of the QoS necessary for high-quality VoIP, it just can't supply the power. I'm considering using PowerDsine power injectors and leaving the 2950s in place.

Any thoughts? Does the 3560 have some functionality that we would miss if we kept the 2950s?

Thanks,
John

 

[jpm121]

The 2950, being a layer 2 switch, of course won't do any routing (since you have them already, you know this, and something else is doing the routing.)

We run 2950s at remote sites over point-to-point T1s and they handle voice just fine (CME on 7940 and 7960 phones). We don't do any advanced QOS thanks to plentiful bandwidth.

 

[Belushi]

Check out this link from Cisco:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/switches/ps5528/products_data_sheet09186a00801f3d7d.html

One very big difference between the two switches is how they handle QOS which of course will factor into your decision of providing IP telephony capabilities. The 3560 is light years beyond the 2950 when it comes to queueing, classifying, and marking packets.

However, the new 2960 series switch incorporates alot of the 3560 functionality when it comes to QOS minus the Power over Ethernet of course. I haven't been able to get my hands a 2960 series switch yet, as they will replace the 2950 series line.

 

[ADB100]

The 'G' versions of the 2950's (ones that run the EI features) have quite a good QoS feature set. I would happily install these if there wasn't a PoE issue. Check out the Cisco QoS SRND 3.2 on CCO:

http://www.cisco.com/application/pdf/en/us/guest/netsol/ns432/c649/ccmigration_09186a008049b062.pdf

The non EI versions only support Layer-2 QoS (802.1p CoS) whereas the EI versions understand Layer-3 QoS (DSCP) and can police traffic using policy-maps.

HTH

Andy