It’s a new innovation from Cisco Systems which happens to the industry’s first 60-watt Power over Ethernet technology which Cisco called Universal Power over Ethernet (UPOE).

Cisco Universal Power over Ethernet (UPOE) can offer twice the power per port of products from competing switch vendors – providing both power and network access to a greater range of devices through a single standard Ethernet cable. This can surely help to lower the total cost of IT operations. By using Cisco’s new UPOE line card and UPOE splitter, any device requiring up to 60-watt power can now be powered by Cisco’s Catalyst 4500E Switches. This includes Cisco IP phones, personal telepresence systems, compact switches and Cisco wireless access points.

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Currently Cisco is working with IEEE and third-party device manufacturers to standardize UPOE in next-generation, network-enabled devices. Which for sure may lead to new PoE standard from IEEE?

Currently  Samsung zero client desktop virtualization devices and BT IP turrets have integrated Cisco UPOE technology into their devices to allow customers the immediate advantage of using their existing Cisco network to power these solutions. This is good sign for this emerging technology. Cisco also tested many devices using UPOE technology like Oracle Sun ray clients.

Currently the Cisco Universal Power over Ethernet is available with a new line card on the Cisco Catalyst 4500E switch. The Single Cisco Catalyst Switch 4500E chassis can support up to 120 UPOE ports. The OPOE is utilizes the existing UTP Cabling standard Cat 5e or higher and RJ 45 connectors for deployment. This helps the customers to make use of their existing cabling infrastructure.

Mean while before departing to Singapore I thought let me continue my series on VTP , in this series let s focus on VTP modes. There three type of VTP modes

a)      VTP Server

b)      VTP Client

c)      VTP Transparent

The VTP domain can be changed to another in a Cisco Catalyst® switch by using the CLI prompt, this is the only way you can change.

Switch C is added to the network connecting via a trunk port to Switch B with no VTP domain configured, in this mode when the Switch C receives the first VTP update from the adjacent Switch B , it will become the part of the VTP domain ITKE as identified in the VTP update.

The VTP domain consists of a group of logical group of Cisco Catalyst Switches that are part of the same VTP management domain. A  Cisco Catalyst Switch can belong only to one VTP domain at any time,

The VTP domain is a logical group of switches that will share VLAN information. Each switch can belong only to one VTP domain in addition to sharing the VLAN information with all other Cisco Catalyst Switches in the same VTP domain. Cisco Catalyst Switches in different VTP domains drops any VTP updates received from Cisco Catalyst Switches.

VLAN Trunking Protocol (VTP) is a Cisco proprietary Layer 2 messaging protocol that manages the addition, deletion, and renaming of VLANs for the Cisco Catalyst Switches in the same VLAN Trunking Protocol (VTP) domain.  VLAN Trunking Protocol (VTP) enables Cisco Catalyst Switches to exchange and maintain consistent VLAN information amongst a group of Cisco Catalyst Switches.

For example, information for the VLAN 50 defined in Cisco Catalyst Switch A is propagated via VTP updates to all other Cisco Catalyst Switches (Switches B, C and D) in the same VTP domain, the other Cisco Catalyst Switches B, C and D will all end up adding VLAN 50 in their local VLAN data base. VTP is available on most of the Cisco Catalyst Family products.

The comparable IEEE standard in use by other manufacturers is GVRP.

An Etherchannel combines multiple physical links into a single logical link that provides aggregate bandwidth of 800 MBPS (fast Etherchannel, full duplex) , 8 GBPS (Giga Etherchannel) or 80 Gbps (10 Giga Ethernet) . Ideal for load sharing or link redundancy – can be used by both layer 2 and Layer 3 subsystems and Etherchannel  can provide network managers with a reliable, high-speed solution for the campus network backbone. EtherChannel technology was invented by Kalpana in the early 1990s. They were later acquired by Cisco Systems in 1994. In 2000 the IEEE passed 802.3ad which is an open standard version of EtherChannel.

I would like to explain some key points about Etherchannel using graphical diagrams so that it’s easy understand and to remember.

Etherchannel  can be configured defined on Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, Giga Ethernet or 10 Giga Ethernet ports.