Cisco Switch Compatibility

Owned by Patrick H
Last updated: Sept 30, 2024
2 min read

Cisco Switch Compatibility With 100 Series 

Energy Efficient Ethernet/Flow Control (Pause Frames) Compatibility Table

Cisco >> Vivi

EEE on and Flow Control on

EEE on and Flow Control off

EEE off and Flow Control on

EEE off and Flow Control off

1Gb & AC Adapter

Compatible

Incompatible

Compatible

Incompatible

1Gb & PoE Adapter *

Incompatible

Incompatible

Compatible

Compatible

100Mb & AC Adapter

Incompatible

Incompatible

Compatible

Compatible

100Mb & PoE Adapter

Incompatible

Incompatible

Compatible

Compatible

 

*This combination is included for completeness but in reality, it wouldn't be used as the PoE splitters only have 100Mbps throughput.

Current Bugs with Cisco Hardware

Catalyst 2960, 3560, 3750

Symptoms:

When using a Cisco 2960 with an incompatible configuration you will see severely degraded performance (lag and stuttering) as bandwidth throughput will be inconsistent. In some cases, you will even see constant line protocol flapping in the Cisco CLI as follows:

Dec 30 03:34:54: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface GigabitEthernet1/0/26, changed state to down Dec 30 03:35:04: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface GigabitEthernet1/0/26, changed state to up Dec 30 03:49:50: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface GigabitEthernet1/0/26, changed state to down Dec 30 03:50:00: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface GigabitEthernet1/0/26, changed state to up

Workaround:

The root cause of this issue is that Vivi does not support Energy Efficient Ethernet that is enabled by default on these models of switches and due to a Cisco bug, it is not disabled for devices running at 100Mbps that do not support it as per the standards.

It can be disabled with this command in the Cisco CLI as follows:

CLI Command: 2960X(config-if)#no power efficient-ethernet

Further information can be found at the Cisco website: https://bst.cloudapps.cisco.com/bugsearch/bug/CSCus35889

Catalyst 9300 & 3850

Symptoms:

Multi-gig switches such as the 9300 & 3850 fail to auto-negotiate with Vivi resulting in no network connectivity.

Workaround:

Update the firmware for your Vivi Boxes to the latest version.