Cost-Effective, Secure Switching with Simplified Management for Your Small Business
Highlights
- Easy-to-use web browser interface makes installation quick and effortless
- High-speed conectivity supports bandwidth-intensive applications
- Security down to the switch port level keeps unauthorized users off the network
- Basic QoS helps ensure a consistent network experience and supports networked applications, including voice, video, and data storage

Cisco® Small Business Smart Switches are cost-effective switching solutions that are ideal for small businesses, the network edge, or workgroups within larger organizations. These easy-to-install, high-speed switches offer many of the same quality-of-service (QoS) and security features found in more expensive full Layer 2 managed switches, but without their complexity. The Cisco SLM2024 24-Port Gigabit Smart Switch (Figure 1) offers twenty-four 10/100/1000 Gigabit over copper ports with two shared copper or optical Small Form-Factor Pluggable (SFP) uplink interfaces for connecting the switch to the core network. The simplified user interface is an intuitive management tool, enabling you to quickly use the comprehensive feature set of the switch, for a better-optimized network.

The Cisco SLM2024 includes numerous QoS features to help ensure that traffic is prioritized properly to deliver the best possible user experience for real-time applications such as voice and video or bandwidth-intensive graphic/video file uploads or downloads. With its Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) snooping feature, the Cisco SLM2024 limits IP multicast traffic (such as real-time presentations, videoconferences, and online gaming) to only the ports that have requested it, enabling the rest of the network to operate at peak efficiency. Additional QoS capabilities, such as IEEE 802.1p priority tagging, differentiated services code point (DSCP), and four hardware queues, also maintain quality for real-time applications such as voice and video. Network traffic can be optimized with the switch's 802.1Q VLAN support, which enables you to quickly segregate network traffic by department or workgroup. VLANs also provide an additional layer of security by keeping sensitive data separated from other workgroups on the network.

Network security is an absolute requirement for any business, and preventing unauthorized access to the company network is critical. The Cisco SLM2024 secures the network through 802.1X port authentication, which prompts end users to provide their username and password before they are permitted to pass data. User access can also be controlled through the Cisco SLM2024's MAC-based filtering capability, which allows network access only to those devices or workstations that have been authorized as identified by their MAC address. The many-to-one or one-to-one port mirroring feature of the Cisco SLM2024 enables you to monitor the type of traffic being transmitted on the network.

The Cisco SLM2024 includes features for quickly expanding and growing your network. To substantially increase network throughput speeds, especially useful for companies whose employees are routinely backing up their hard drives to a company server or storage platform, the Cisco SLM2024 supports link aggregation, which allows multiple high-bandwidth trunks between switches to be set up. Link aggregation also provides a level of availability and redundancy, as traffic will continue to flow even if one of the network links break. The Cisco SLM2024's Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) support and storm control features help to control planned or inadvertent cable loops when switches are connected to one another. These loops can cause broadcast or multicast storms in the network, severely limiting its performance. With these features, you can confidently build a mesh of switches and quickly expand your network to support your growing workforce.