In April 2003, Cisco announced the Catalyst 3750 as a new product family. The Catalyst 3750 provides Cisco’s first high density gigabit Ethernet over copper switch in a fixed chassis, providing up to 24 x 10/100/1000BASE-T ports + 4 x 1000BASE-X ports in a single 1.5RU chassis.
The Cisco Catalyst 3750 is similar in many respects to the Catalyst 3550, with the same concept of SMI and EMI and full Layer 3 switching capabilities. It also provides several enhancements over the Catalyst 3550, which include the following:
- Memory— The Cisco 3750 includes 128 MB memory (compared with 64 MB in Catalyst 3550), which allows for more unicast and multicast routes to be stored in the routing table.
- Gigabit Ethernet over copper— High-density 10/100/1000 gigabit Ethernet copper ports.
- IP version 6 (IPv6)— Support for hardware-based Layer 3 switching for IPv6 in future software releases.
- Stackwise technology— Enhances performance, scalability, and management by allowing up to 9 switches to be stacked using a 32-Gbps interconnect. All switches are managed as a single entity, with all ports from all switches appearing as part of a single virtual switch.
- Jumbo frames— Allows the 3750 to support oversized Ethernet frames on Gigabit Ethernet ports, which are important for high data transfer applications such as storage and video.
- Support for SFP— Provides 1000BASE-X connectivity with new small form-factor pluggable module technology, which replace the previous Gigabit Interface Converter (GBIC) technology. SFPs are much smaller than GBICs, allowing for up to 4 x 1000BASE-X connections on the Catalyst 3750 switch.
Table 1-5 lists each of the Catalyst 3750 switches. Each switch contains 16 MB flash and 128 MB memory.
Table 1-5. Cisco Catalyst 3750 Models
Model | Hardware Specifications | Performance | Software Image | |
Forwarding Bandwidth | Forwarding Rate | |||
3750-24TS | 24 x 10/100BASE-T
4 x 1000BASE-X (SFP) |
32 Gbps | 6.5 Mpps | SMI or EMI |
3750-48TS | 48 x 10/100BASE-T
4 x 1000BASE-X (SFP) |
32 Gbps | 13.1 Mpps | SMI or EMI |
3750-24T | 24 x 10/100/1000BASE-T | 32 Gbps | 35.7 Mpps | SMI or EMI |
3750-24TS | 24 x 10/100/1000BASE-T
4 x 1000BASE-X (SFP) |
32 Gbps | 38.7 Mpps | SMI or EMI |
More Related: How to Configure a Cisco 3750?