Architectures With Shared‐Memory‐Based Switch Fabrics: Case Study—Cisco Catalyst 3550 Series Switches

The Cisco Catalyst 3550 Series are fixed configuration, stackable switches that employ a distributed shared memory switch fabric architecture. This chapter presents a high‐level architecture of the Catalyst 3550 series of switch/ routers. This architecture was developed to strike a good balance between obtaining maximum packet forwarding performance in hardware and software design flexibility. In centralized forwarding, a single central forwarding engine is used that performs all forwarding operations for the system. The chapter discusses the main architectural features of the Catalyst 3550 Series. It also presents some software features of Catalyst 3550 Series. The Cisco Catalyst 3550 Series switches support advanced features, such as advanced quality of service (QoS) management and control, rate‐limiting access control lists (ACLs), multicast traffic management, and advanced IP unicast and multicast routing protocols. The Catalyst 3550 supports a number of extended and advanced features beyond Layer 2 and 3 packet forwarding.