Managed switches that provide the ideal combination of features and affordability
To stay ahead in a competitive marketplace, small businesses need to make every dollar count. That means
getting the most value from your technology investments, but it also means making sure that employees have
fast, reliable access to the business tools and information they need. Every minute an employee waits for an
unresponsive application – and every minute your network is down – has an impact on your bottom line. The
importance of maintaining a strong and dependable business network only grows as your business adds more
employees, applications, and network complexity.
When your business needs advanced security and features but affordability and value are key, you’re ready for
the new generation of Cisco® Small Business managed switches: the Cisco 350X Series.
Cisco 350X Series Stackable Managed Switches
The Cisco 350X Series Stackable Managed Switches (Figure 1) are a new line of stackable managed Ethernet
switches that provide the rich capabilities you need to support a more demanding network environment at a
very affordable price. The SG350X models provide 8 to 48 ports of Gigabit and Multigigabit Ethernet
connectivity with 10 Gigabit Ethernet uplinks. The SX350X models provide 8, 12, 24, or 48 ports of 10 Gigabit
Ethernet, providing a solid foundation and more than enough bandwidth for your business applications today
and in the future. These switches are easy to deploy and manage without a large IT staff.
Cisco 350X Series switches are designed to protect your technology investment as your business grows. Unlike
switches that claim to be stackable but have elements that require separate administration and troubleshooting,
the Cisco 350X Series provides true stacking capability, allowing you to configure, manage, and troubleshoot
multiple physical switches as a single device and more easily expand your network.
A true stack delivers a unified data and control plane, in addition to a management plane, providing flexibility,
scalability, and ease of use because the stack of units operates as a single entity. The switches also protect
your technology investment with an enhanced warranty, dedicated technical support, and the ability to upgrade
equipment in the future. Overall, the Cisco 350X Series provides the ideal technology foundation for a growing
business.
Features and benefits
Cisco 350X Series switches provide the advanced feature set that growing businesses and high-bandwidth
applications and technologies require. These switches can improve the availability of your critical applications,
protect your business information, and optimize your network bandwidth to more effectively deliver information
and support applications.
High-performance 10 Gigabit Ethernet
Cisco 350 Series switches provide the advanced feature set that growing businesses require and that high-bandwidth applications and technologies demand. These switches can improve the availability of your critical
applications, protect your business information, and optimize your network bandwidth to more effectively
deliver information and support applications. The switches provide the following benefits.
Ease of management and deployment
Cisco 350X Series switches break the barrier of 10 Gigabit Ethernet adoption by providing affordable and
powerful features for growing small and medium-sized business networks. With the 10G ports in both copper
and fiber, you can easily and cost-effectively enable 10G connections to servers and network storage devices
with standard RJ-45 Ethernet cables. You can also aggregate 10G Enhanced Small Form-Factor Pluggable
(SFP+) fiber connections to build a high-performance backbone to dramatically increase the overall speed of
your network.
Multigigabit performance
Network needs are changing quickly. With evolving wireless standards and the rising number of wireless
devices, keeping up with data rates and growing traffic can be a challenge. Your traditional Ethernet
infrastructure can support speeds of up to 1 Gigabit per second (Gbps), but competing today requires much
more capacity. One option is to completely replace your older cabling infrastructure and upgrade your
hardware. But wouldn’t it be better to increase network speed and traffic capacity in a way that’s quick,
inexpensive, and efficient?
Multigigabit Ethernet technology uses capabilities in your existing cabling infrastructure to meet bandwidth
requirements and provide up to five times the performance of a 1G switch. The technology enables
intermediate data rates of 2.5 and 5 Gbps to ease the jump from 1 Gbps to 10 Gbps. These intermediate rates
run on most installed cables and preserve older Unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP) wiring, which is good for
802.11ac and 802.11ax wireless LAN applications.
The technology also supports Power over Ethernet (PoE), including PoE+ and 60W PoE. Cisco Multigigabit
Ethernet switches help you avoid having to run multiple cables between switches and access points and let
your networks welcome next-generation traffic speeds and data rates.
Easy configuration and management
Cisco 350X Series switches are designed to be easy to use and easy to manage by small business customers
or the partners that serve them.
● Smart Network Application (SNA) is an innovative network-level monitoring and management tool
embedded in the Cisco 100 to 500 Series switches. It can discover network topology, display link status,
monitor events, apply configurations, and upgrade software images across multiple switches in the
network.
● The FindIT Network Manager and Probe are designed to manage Cisco 100 to 500 Series switches,
routers, and wireless access points. They let you proactively manage the network instead of just reacting
to events. Cisco 350X Series switches support the embedded FindIT Network Probe, eliminating the
need to set up a separate hardware or virtual machine on site. For more information, visit
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/cloud-systems-management/findit-network-management/index.html.
● The FindIT Network Discovery Utility works through a simple toolbar on the user’s web browser to
discover Cisco devices on the network and display basic device information, inventory, and new
firmware updates to aid in the configuration and speed the deployment of Cisco Small Business
products. For more information, visit https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/cloud-systemsmanagement/small-business-findit-network-discovery-utility/index.html.
● Simple or advanced-mode Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) reduce the time required to deploy,
troubleshoot, and manage the network. Configuration wizards simplify the most common configuration
tasks and provide the ultimate tool for anyone to set up and manage the network.
● Cisco Smartports technology provides more advanced capabilities and hands-on control by
automatically configuring ports with specific levels of security, Quality of Service (QoS), and availability
according to the type of connected device, based on Cisco best practices and pretested configurations.
The Auto Smartports feature automatically applies the intelligence delivered through the Smartports roles
to the port based on the device types discovered over Cisco Discovery Protocol or Link Layer Discovery
Protocol Media Endpoint Discovery (LLDP-MED). This capability facilitates zero-touch deployments.
● The USB port on the front panel of the switch enables easy image and configuration transfer for faster
deployment or upgrades.
Power over Ethernet Plus (PoE+) and 60W PoE
PoE technology simplifies the deployment of IP phones and wireless access points by allowing you to connect
and power network endpoints over a single Ethernet cable, without having to install separate power supplies.
The 350X Series switches support 15W PoE and 30W PoE+. The switches also support 60W PoE on selected
ports to power compact switches, high-power wireless access points, or connected lighting. The PoE power is
intelligently managed such that only the amount of power needed by an endpoint is delivered to it and none is
wasted. As a result, the switches can support devices that require more power, such as 802.11ac wireless
access points, video-based IP phones, surveillance cameras, and more. The PoE features in the 350X Series
switches are also fully backward compatible with 802.3af PoE, 802.3at PoE+, and Cisco legacy PoE protocols.
High reliability and resiliency
In a growing business where availability 24 hours a day, 7 days a week is critical, you need to assure that
employees can always access the data and resources they need. In these environments, stackable switches
can play an important role in minimizing downtime and improving network resiliency. For example, if the master
switch within a Cisco 350X Series stack fails, another switch takes over, keeping your network up and running.
You can also replace individual devices in the stack without taking your whole network offline or affecting
employee productivity.
The Cisco 350X Series also supports dual images, allowing you to perform software upgrades without having to
worry about the network going down during the upgrade.
Simplified IT operation
Cisco 350X Series switches help optimize your IT operations with built-in features that simplify and streamline
day-to-day network operation:
● True stacking allows you to troubleshoot, configure, and manage multiple physical switches as a single
entity.
● Cisco switches use common chipsets and software across all switching portfolios, so all Cisco switches
within a category support the same feature set, making it easier to manage and support all switches
across the network.
True stacking
Some switches claim to support stacking, but they only support “clustering” or “virtual stacking,” which means
each switch must still be managed and configured individually. They cannot be managed as a single entity or
device. Cisco 350X Series switches provide true horizontal stacking, enabling you to configure, manage, and
troubleshoot multiple physical switches as a single device, with a single IP address, for up to four units and up
to 208 ports.
A true horizontal stack delivers a unified data and control plane, in addition to a management plane, providing
flexibility, scalability, and ease of use because the stack of units operates as a single entity constituting all the
ports of the stack members. This capability can radically reduce complexity in a growing network environment
while improving the resiliency and availability of network applications. True stacking also provides other cost
savings and administrative benefits through features such as cross-stack QoS, Virtual LANs (VLANs), Link
Aggregation Groups (LAGs), and port mirroring, which clustered switches can’t support.
Strong security
Cisco 350X Series switches provide the advanced security features you need to protect your business data and
keep unauthorized users off the network:
● Embedded Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption protects management data traveling to and from the
switch.
● Extensive Access Control Lists (ACLs) restrict sensitive portions of the network to keep out unauthorized
users and guard against network attacks.
● Guest VLANs let you provide Internet connectivity to nonemployee users while isolating critical business
services from guest traffic.
● Support for advanced network security applications such as IEEE 802.1X port security tightly limits
access to specific segments of your network. Web-based authentication provides a consistent interface
to authenticate all types of host devices and operating systems, without the complexity of deploying
802.1X clients on each endpoint.
● Advanced defense mechanisms, including dynamic Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) inspection, IP
Source Guard, and Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) snooping, detect and block deliberate
network attacks. Combinations of these protocols are also referred to as IP-MAC Port Binding (IPMB).
● IPv6 First Hop Security extends advanced threat protection to IPv6. This comprehensive security suite
includes Neighbor Discovery (ND) inspection, Router Advertisement (RA) guard, DHCPv6 guard, and
neighbor binding integrity check, providing unparalleled protection against a vast range of address
spoofing and man-in-the-middle attacks on IPv6 networks.
● Time-based ACLs and port operation restrict access to the network during predesignated times such as
business hours.
● Uniform MAC address-based security can be applied automatically to mobile users as they roam
between wireless access points.
● Secure Core Technology (SCT) helps ensure that the switch is able to process management traffic in the
face of a Denial-of-Service (DoS) attack.
● Private VLAN Edge (PVE) provides Layer 2 isolation between devices on the same VLAN.
● Storm control can be applied to broadcast, multicast, and unknown unicast traffic.
● Protection of management sessions occurs using RADIUS, TACACS+, and local database authentication
as well as secure management sessions over SSL, Secure Shell (SSH), and Simple Network
Management Protocol (SNMP) v3.
● DoS attack prevention maximizes network uptime in the presence of an attack.
IPv6 support
As the IP address scheme evolves to accommodate a growing number of network devices, the Cisco 350X
Series can support the transition to the next generation of networking and operating systems such as Windows
7, Vista, and Linux. These switches continue to support previous-generation IPv4, allowing you to evolve to the
new IPv6 standard at your own pace, and helping ensure that your current network will continue to support your
business applications in the future. Cisco 350X Series switches have successfully completed rigorous IPv6
testing and have received the USGv6 and IPv6 Gold certification.
Advanced Layer 3 traffic management
The Cisco 350X Series enables a more advanced set of traffic management capabilities to help growing
businesses organize their networks more effectively and efficiently. The switches provide static LAN Layer 3
routing, allowing you to segment your network into workgroups and communicate across VLANs without
degrading application performance. With these capabilities, you can boost the efficiency of your network by
offloading internal traffic-handling tasks from your router and allowing it to manage primarily external traffic and
security.
Power efficiency
The Cisco 350X Series integrates a variety of power-saving features across all models, providing the industry’s
most extensive energy-efficient switching portfolio. These switches are designed to conserve energy by
optimizing power use, which helps protects the environment and reduce your energy costs. They provide an
eco-friendly network solution without compromising performance. Cisco 350X Series switches feature:
● Support for the Energy Efficient Ethernet (IEEE 802.3az) standard, which reduces energy consumption by
monitoring the amount of traffic on an active link and putting the link into a sleep state during quiet
periods
● The latest Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs), which use low-power 28-nanometer
technology and low-power, high-performance ARM CPUs
● Automatic power shutoff on ports when a link is down
● LEDs that can be turned off to save power
● Embedded intelligence to adjust signal strength based on the length of the connecting cable
Networkwide automatic voice deployment
Using a combination of Cisco Discovery Protocol, LLDP-MED, Auto Smartports, and Voice Services Discovery
Protocol (VSDP, a unique Cisco protocol), customers can deploy an end-to-end voice network dynamically. The
switches in the network automatically converge around a single voice VLAN and QoS parameters and then
propagate them out to the phones on the ports, where they are discovered. For example, automated voice
VLAN capabilities let you plug any IP phone (including third-party phones) into your IP telephony network and
receive an immediate dial tone. The switch automatically configures the device with the right VLAN and QoS
parameters to prioritize voice traffic.
Peace of mind and investment protection
Cisco 350X Series switches offer the reliable performance and peace of mind you expect from a Cisco switch.
When you invest in the Cisco 350X Series, you gain the benefit of:
● Limited lifetime warranty with Next-Business-Day (NBD) advance replacement (where available;
otherwise same day shipping)
● A solution that has been rigorously tested to help ensure optimal network uptime to keep employees
connected to primary resources and productive
● A solution designed and tested to easily and fully integrate with other Cisco voice, unified
communications, security, and networking products, as part of a comprehensive technology platform for
your business
Cisco limited lifetime hardware warranty
Cisco 350X Series switches offer a limited lifetime hardware warranty with NBD advance replacement (where
available; otherwise same day shipping) and a limited lifetime warranty for fans and power supplies.
In addition, Cisco offers software application updates for bug fixes for the warranty term and telephone
technical support at no charge for the first 12 months following the date of purchase. To download software
updates, go to https://software.cisco.com/download/navigator.html.
Product warranty terms and other information applicable to Cisco products are available at
https://www.cisco.com/go/warranty.
World-class service and support
Your time is valuable, especially when you have a problem affecting your business. Cisco 350X Series switches
are backed by the Cisco Smart Net Total Care® Service, which provides affordable peace-of-mind coverage.
This subscription-based service helps you protect your investment and derive maximum value from Cisco Small
Business products. Delivered by Cisco and backed by your trusted partner, this comprehensive service includes
software updates and access to the Cisco Support Center, and it extends technical service to three years.
Cisco Small Business products are supported by professionals in the Cisco Support Center, a dedicated
resource for small business customers and networks, with locations worldwide that are specifically trained to
understand your needs. You also have access to extensive technical and product information through the Cisco
Support Community, an online forum that enables you to collaborate with your peers and reach Cisco technical
experts for support information.
