Release Notes for the Catalyst 2960-S Switches, Cisco IOS Release 12.2(53)SE1

Supported Hardware

• Table 1 , Catalyst 2960-S Switches
• Table 2 , Supported Power Supply
• Table 3 , Supported SFP and SFP+ Modules

Device Manager System Requirements

• Hardware Requirements
• Software Requirements

Hardware Requirements

Software Requirements

These are the supported operating systems and browsers for the device manager:

• Windows 2000, XP, Vista, and Windows Server 2003.
• Internet Explorer 5.5, 6.0, 7.0, Firefox 1.5, 2.0 or later.

The device manager verifies the browser version when starting a session, and it does not require a plug-in.

CNA Compatibility

Cisco IOS 12.2(53)SE1 will be supported in a future release of the Cisco Network Assistant. You can download Cisco Network Assistant from this URL:

http://www.cisco.com/pcgi-bin/tablebuild.pl/NetworkAssistant

For more information about Cisco Network Assistant, see the Release Notes for Cisco Network Assistant on Cisco.com.

Finding the Software Version and Feature Set

The Cisco IOS image is stored as a bin file in a directory that is named with the Cisco IOS release. A subdirectory contains the files needed for web management. The image is stored on the system board flash device (flash:).

You can use the show version privileged EXEC command to see the software version that is running on your switch. The second line of the display shows the version.

You can also use the dir filesystem : privileged EXEC command to see the directory names of other software images that you might have stored in flash memory.

Deciding Which Files to Use

The upgrade procedures in these release notes describe how to perform the upgrade by using a combined tar file. This file contains the Cisco IOS image file and the files needed for the embedded device manager. You must use the combined tar file to upgrade the switch through the device manager. To upgrade the switch through the command-line interface (CLI), use the tar file and the archive download-sw privileged EXEC command.

The switch image file contains two feature sets: LAN lite and LAN base.

Switches with model numbers that have a -S in the product ID, such as Catalyst 2960S-48TS-S, support the LAN lite feature set. This feature set does not support stacking. These switches have a metal cover over the stack module slot to prevent a stack module from being installed. These switches support the LAN lite SDM template.

Switches with model numbers that have a -L in the product ID, such as Catalyst 2960S-24TS-L, support the LAN base feature set. These switches support the FlexStack modules and the LAN base SDM template.

You can use the show version privileged EXEC command to display the running image.

Archiving Software Images

Before upgrading your switch software, make sure that you have archived copies of the current Cisco IOS release and the Cisco IOS release to which you are upgrading. You should keep these archived images until you have upgraded all devices in the network to the new Cisco IOS image and until you have verified that the new Cisco IOS image works properly in your network.

Cisco routinely removes old Cisco IOS versions from Cisco.com. See Product Bulletin 2863 for more information:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/iosswrel/ps8802/ps6969/ps1835/prod_bulletin0900aecd80281c0e.html

You can copy the bin software image file on the flash memory to the appropriate TFTP directory on a host by using the copy flash: tftp: privileged EXEC command.

Note Although you can copy any file on the flash memory to the TFTP server, it is time consuming to copy all of the HTML files in the tar file. We recommend that you download the tar file from Cisco.com and archive it on an internal host in your network.

You can also configure the switch as a TFTP server to copy files from one switch to another without using an external TFTP server by using the tftp-server global configuration command. For more information about the tftp-server command, see the “Basic File Transfer Services Commands” section of the Cisco IOS Configuration Fundamentals Command Reference, Release 12.2 at this URL:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/ios/12_2/configfun/command/reference/ffun_r.html

Upgrading a Switch by Using the Device Manager or Network Assistant

You can upgrade switch software by using the device manager or Network Assistant. For detailed instructions, click Help.

Note When using the device manager to upgrade your switch, do not use or close your browser session after the upgrade process begins. Wait until after the upgrade process completes.

Upgrading a Switch by Using the CLI

This procedure is for copying the combined tar file to the switch. You copy the file to the switch from a TFTP server and extract the files. You can download an image file and replace or keep the current image.

To download software, follow these steps:

Step 1 Log in and download the software image file:

http://tools.cisco.com/support/downloads/go/Redirect.x?mdfid=268438038

To download the image for a Catalyst 2960-S switch, click Catalyst 2960-S software.

Step 2 Copy the image to the appropriate TFTP directory on the workstation, and make sure that the TFTP server is properly configured.

For more information, see Appendix B in the software configuration guide for this release.

Step 3 Log into the switch through the console port or a Telnet session.

Step 4 (Optional) Ensure that you have IP connectivity to the TFTP server by entering this privileged EXEC command:

For more information about assigning an IP address and default gateway to the switch, see the software configuration guide for this release.

Step 5 Download the image file from the TFTP server to the switch. If you are installing the same version of software that is currently on the switch, overwrite the current image by entering this privileged EXEC command:

The /overwrite option overwrites the software image in flash memory with the downloaded one.

The /reload option reloads the system after downloading the image unless the configuration has been changed and not saved.

For // location, specify the IP address of the TFTP server.

For / directory / image-name .tar, specify the directory (optional) and the image to download. Directory and image names are case sensitive.

This example shows how to download an image from a TFTP server at 198.30.20.19 and to overwrite the image on the switch:

You can also download the image file from the TFTP server to the switch and keep the current image by replacing the /overwrite option with the /leave-old-sw option.

Recovering from a Software Failure

For additional recovery procedures, see the “Troubleshooting” chapter in the software configuration guide for this release.

New Hardware Features

For a list of all supported hardware, see the Supported Hardware.

New Software Features

This release is the first software release for the Catalyst 2960-S switches. For a detailed list of key features for this software release, see the Catalyst 2960 and 2960-S Switch Software Configuration Guide.

Table 6 lists the software features that are supported only on the Catalyst 2960-S switches. These features are not supported on the Catalyst 2960 switches.

Cisco IOS Limitations

• Configuration Limitations
• Ethernet Limitations
• HSRP Limitations
• IP Limitations
• IP Telephony Limitations
• Multicasting Limitations
• PoE+ Limitations
• Quality of Service Limitations
• RADIUS Limitations
• SPAN and Remote SPAN Limitations
• Trunking Limitations
• VLAN Limitations

Configuration Limitations

• A static IP address might be removed when the previously acquired DHCP IP address lease expires.

This problem occurs under these conditions:

– When the switch is booted up without a configuration (no config.text file in flash memory).

– When the switch is connected to a DHCP server that is configured to give an address to it (the dynamic IP address is assigned to VLAN 1).

– When an IP address is configured on VLAN 1 before the dynamic address lease assigned to VLAN 1 expires.

The workaround is to reconfigure the static IP address. (CSCea71176 and CSCdz11708)

• When connected to some third-party devices that send early preambles, a switch port operating at 100 Mb/s full duplex or 100 Mb/s half duplex might bounce the line protocol up and down. The problem is observed only when the switch is receiving frames.

The workaround is to configure the port for 10 Mb/s and half duplex or to connect a hub or a nonaffected device to the switch. (CSCed39091)

• When port security is enabled on an interface in restricted mode and the switchport block unicast interface command has been entered on that interface, MAC addresses are incorrectly forwarded when they should be blocked.

The workaround is to enter the no switchport block unicast interface configuration command on that specific interface. (CSCee93822)

• When the logging event-spanning-tree interface configuration command is configured and logging to the console is enabled, a topology change might generate a large number of logging messages, causing high CPU utilization. CPU utilization can increase with the number of spanning-tree instances and the number of interfaces configured with the logging event-spanning-tree interface configuration command. This condition adversely affects how the switch operates and could cause problems such as STP convergence delay.

High CPU utilization can also occur with other conditions, such as when debug messages are logged at a high rate to the console.

Use one of these workarounds:

– Disable logging to the console.

– Rate-limit logging messages to the console.

– Remove the logging event spanning-tree interface configuration command from the interfaces. (CSCsg91027)

• The far-end fault optional facility is not supported on the GLC-GE-100FX SFP module.

The workaround is to configure aggressive UDLD. (CSCsh70244).

• When you enter the boot host retry timeout global configuration command to specify the amount of time that the client should keep trying to download the configuration and you do not enter a timeout value, the default value is zero, which should mean that the client keeps trying indefinitely. However, the client does not keep trying to download the configuration.

The workaround is to always enter a non zero value for the timeout value when you enter the boot host retry timeout timeout-value command. (CSCsk65142)

• A ciscoFlashMIBTrap message appears during switch startup. This does not affect switch functionality. (CSCsj46992)
• If you enter the show tech-support privileged EXEC command after you enter the remote command { all | stack-member-number } privileged EXEC command, the complete output does not appear.

The workaround is to use the session stack-member-number privileged EXEC command. (CSCsz38090)

Ethernet Limitations

• Traffic on EtherChannel ports is not perfectly load-balanced. Egress traffic on EtherChannel ports are distributed to member ports on load balance configuration and traffic characteristics like MAC or IP address. More than one traffic stream may map to same member ports based on hashing results calculated by the ASIC.

If this happens, uneven traffic distribution will happen on EtherChannel ports.

Changing the load balance distribution method or changing the number of ports in the EtherChannel can resolve this problem. Use any of these workarounds to improve EtherChannel load balancing:

– for random source-ip and dest-ip traffic, configure load balance method as src-dst-ip

– for incrementing source-ip traffic, configure load balance method as src-ip

– for incrementing dest-ip traffic, configure load balance method as dst-ip

– Configure the number of ports in the EtherChannel so that the number is equal to a power of 2 (i.e. 2, 4, or 8)

For example, with load balance configured as dst-ip with 150 distinct incrementing destination IP addresses, and the number of ports in the EtherChannel set to either 2, 4, or 8, load distribution is optimal.(CSCeh81991)

HSRP Limitations

• When the active switch fails in a switch cluster that uses Hot Standby Routing Protocol (HSRP) redundancy, the new active switch might not contain a full cluster member list. The workaround is to ensure that the ports on the standby cluster members are not in the spanning-tree blocking state. To verify that these ports are not in the blocking state, see the “Configuring STP” chapter in the software configuration guide. (CSCec76893)

IP Limitations

• When the rate of received DHCP requests exceeds 2,000 packets per minute for a long time, the response time might be slow when you are using the console. The workaround is to use rate limiting on DHCP traffic to prevent a denial of service attack from occurring. (CSCeb59166)

IP Telephony Limitations

• After you change the access VLAN on a port that has IEEE 802.1x enabled, the IP phone address is removed. Because learning is restricted on IEEE 802.1x-capable ports, it takes approximately 30 seconds before the address is relearned. No workaround is necessary. (CSCea85312)
• Some access point devices are incorrectly discovered as IEEE 802.3af Class 1 devices. These access points should be discovered as Cisco pre-standard devices. The show power inline user EXEC command shows the access point as an IEEE Class 1 device. The workaround is to power the access point by using an AC wall adaptor. (CSCin69533)
• The Cisco 7905 IP Phone is error-disabled when the phone is connected to wall power.

The workaround is to enable PoE and to configure the switch to recover from the PoE error-disabled state. (CSCsf32300)

Multicasting Limitations

• If the number of multicast routes and Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) groups are more than the maximum number specified by the show sdm prefer global configuration command, the traffic received on unknown groups is flooded in the received VLAN even though the show ip igmp snooping multicast-table privileged EXEC command output shows otherwise. The workaround is to reduce the number of multicast routes and IGMP snooping groups to less than the maximum supported value. (CSCdy09008)
• IGMP filtering is applied to packets that are forwarded through hardware. It is not applied to packets that are forwarded through software. Hence, with multicast routing enabled, the first few packets are sent from a port even when IGMP filtering is set to deny those groups on that port. There is no workaround. (CSCdy82818)
• If an IG MP report packet has two multicast group records, the switch removes or adds interfaces depending on the order of the records in the packet:

– If the ALLOW_NEW_SOURCE record is before the BLOCK_OLD_SOURCE record, the switch removes the port from the group.

– If the BLOCK_OLD_SOURCE record is before the ALLOW_NEW_SOURCE record, the switch adds the port to the group.

There is no workaround. (CSCec20128)

• When IGMP snooping is disabled and you enter the switchport block multicast interface configuration command, IP multicast traffic is not blocked.

The switchport block multicast interface configuration command is only applicable to non-IP multicast traffic.

There is no workaround. (CSCee16865)

• Incomplete multicast traffic can be seen under either of these conditions:

– You disable IP multicast routing or re-enable it globally on an interface.

– A switch mroute table temporarily runs out of resources and recovers later.

The workaround is to enter the clear ip mroute privileged EXEC command on the interface. (CSCef42436)

After you configure a switch to join a multicast group by entering the ip igmp join-group group-address interface configuration command, the switch does not receive join packets from the client, and the switch port connected to the client is removed from the IGMP snooping forwarding table.

Use one of these workarounds:

– Cancel membership in the multicast group by using the no ip igmp join-group group-address interface configuration command on an SVI.

– Disable IGMP snooping on the VLAN interface by using the no ip igmp snooping vlan vlan-id global configuration command. (CSCeh90425)

• A switch drops unicast traffic under these conditions:

– The switch belongs to a Layer 2 ring.

– More than 800 Mbps of multicast traffic is sent in both directions on the interface.

When multicast traffic is sent in one direction and unicast traffic is sent in another, unicast traffic is dropped at the multicast traffic source port.

The workaround is to apply a policy map so that the least significant traffic is discarded. (CSCsq83882)

PoE+ Limitations

• When a powered device (such as an IP phone) connected to a PoE+ port restarts and sends a CDP or LLDP packet with a power TLV, the switch locks to the power-negotiation protocol of that first packet. The switch does not respond to power requests from the other protocol. For example, if the switch is locked to CDP, it does not provide power to devices that send LLDP requests. If CDP is disabled after the switch has locked on it, the switch does not respond to LLDP power requests and can no longer power on any accessories.

The workaround is to turn the powered device off and then on again.

Quality of Service Limitations

• Some switch queues are disabled if the buffer size or threshold level is set too low with the mls qos queue-set output global configuration command. The ratio of buffer size to threshold level should be greater than 10 to avoid disabling the queue. The workaround is to choose compatible buffer sizes and threshold levels. (CSCea76893)
• When auto-QoS is enabled on the switch, priority queuing is not enabled. Instead, the switch uses shaped round robin (SRR) as the queuing mechanism. The auto-QoS feature is designed on each platform based on the feature set and hardware limitations, and the queuing mechanism supported on each platform might be different. There is no workaround. (CSCee22591)

RADIUS Limitations

• RADIUS change of authorization (COA) reauthorization is not supported on the critical auth VLAN.

There is no workaround. (CSCta05071)

SPAN and Remote SPAN Limitations

• Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP), VLAN Trunking Protocol (VTP), and Port Aggregation Protocol (PAgP) packets received from a SPAN source are not sent to the destination interfaces of a local SPAN session. The workaround is to use the monitor session session_number destination { interface interface-id encapsulation replicate} global configuration command for local SPAN. (CSCed24036)

Trunking Limitations

• The switch treats frames received with mixed encapsulation (IEEE 802.1Q and Inter-Switch Link [ISL]) as frames with FCS errors, increments the error counters, and the port LED blinks amber. This happens when an ISL-unaware device receives an ISL-encapsulated packet and forwards the frame to an IEEE 802.1Q trunk interface. There is no workaround. (CSCdz33708)
• IP traffic with IP options set is sometimes leaked on a trunk port. For example, a trunk port is a member of an IP multicast group in VLAN X but is not a member in VLAN Y. If VLAN Y is the output interface for the multicast route entry assigned to the multicast group and an interface in VLAN Y belongs to the same multicast group, the IP-option traffic received on an input VLAN interface other than one in VLAN Y is sent on the trunk port in VLAN Y because the trunk port is forwarding in VLAN Y, even though the port has no group membership in VLAN Y. There is no workaround. (CSCdz42909).
• For trunk ports or access ports configured with IEEE 802.1Q tagging, inconsistent statistics might appear in the show interfaces counters privileged EXEC command output. Valid IEEE 802.1Q frames of 64 to 66 bytes are correctly forwarded even though the port LED blinks amber, and the frames are not counted on the interface statistics. There is no workaround. (CSCec35100).

VLAN Limitations

• If the number of VLANs times the number of trunk ports exceeds the recommended limit of 13,000, the switch can fail.

The workaround is to reduce the number of VLANs or trunks. (CSCeb31087)

• When line rate traffic is passing through a dynamic port, and you enter the switchport access vlan dynamic interface configuration command for a range of ports, the VLANs might not be assigned correctly. One or more VLANs with a null ID appears in the MAC address table instead.

The workaround is to enter the switchport access vlan dynamic interface configuration command separately on each port. (CSCsi26392)

Device Manager Limitations

• When you are prompted to accept the security certificate and you click No, you only see a blank screen, and the device manager does not launch.

The workaround is to click Yes when you are prompted to accept the certificate. (CSCef45718)

Switch Stack Notes

• Always power off a switch before adding or removing it from a switch stack.

Cisco IOS Notes

• You can only use the logging on and then the no logging console global configuration commands to disable logging to the console. (CSCec71490)
• If the switch requests information from the Cisco Secure Access Control Server (ACS) and the message exchange times out because the server does not respond, a message similar to this appears:

If this message appears, check that there is network connectivity between the switch and the ACS. You should also check that the switch has been properly configured as an AAA client on the ACS

Device Manager Notes

• We recommend this browser setting to speed up the time needed to display the device manager from Microsoft Internet Explorer.

From Microsoft Internet Explorer:

1. Choose Tools > Internet Options.

2. Click Settings in the “Temporary Internet files” area.

3. From the Settings window, choose Automatically.

4. Click OK.

5. Click OK to exit the Internet Options window.

• If you use Internet Explorer Version 5.5 and select a URL with a nonstandard port at the end of the address (for example, www. cisco.com:84), you must enter http:// as the URL prefix. Otherwise, you cannot launch the device manager.
• Japanese translation is available for the online help but not for the device manager GUI.
• When the switch is running a localized version of the device manager, the switch displays settings and status only in English letters. Input entries on the switch can only be in English letters.
• For device manager session on Internet Explorer, popup messages in Japanese or in simplified Chinese can appear as garbled text. These messages appear properly if your operating system is in Japanese or Chinese.
• You cannot create and manage switch clusters through the device manager. To create and manage switch clusters, use the CLI or Cisco Network Assistant.
• The HTTP server interface must be enabled to display the device manager. By default, the HTTP server is enabled on the switch. Use the show running-config privileged EXEC command to see if the HTTP server is enabled or disabled.

If you are not using the default method of authentication (the enable password), you need to configure the HTTP server interface with the method of authentication used on the switch.

Beginning in privileged EXEC mode, follow these steps to configure the HTTP server interface:

The device manager uses the HTTP protocol (the default is port 80) and the default method of authentication (the enable password) to communicate with the switch through any of its Ethernet ports and to allow switch management from a standard web browser.

If you change the HTTP port, you must include the new port number when you enter the IP address in the browser Location or Address field (for example, http://10.1.126.45:184 where 184 is the new HTTP port number). You should write down the port number through which you are connected. Use care when changing the switch IP information.

Update for the Catalyst 2960-S Hardware Installation Guide

The Catalyst 2960S-48TS-S and 2960S-24TS-S switches support the GLC-ZX-SM SFP module.

This document is to be used in conjunction with the documents listed in the “Obtaining Documentation and Submitting a Service Request” section.

Cisco and the Cisco logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cisco and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. To view a list of Cisco trademarks, go to this URL: www.cisco.com/go/trademarks. Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company. (1721R)

Any Internet Protocol (IP) addresses used in this document are not intended to be actual addresses. Any examples, command display output, and figures included in the document are shown for illustrative purposes only. Any use of actual IP addresses in illustrative content is unintentional and coincidental.

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