Cisco has updated its small business switch series with the introduction of the Catalyst 1200 and 1300 Series appliances.
Both series are equipped with a clock frequency of 1With a 4GHz dual-core ARM CPU and 1GB DDR memory, it's twice as fast and four times as fast as the previous batch of Catalysts for small businesses.
The primary function of these devices is Layer 3 switching, but the 1200 series is limited to static routing, while the 1300 series allows for dynamic routing, which can be used to establish VLANs.
Both series support Power over Ethernet (PoE), but the 1200 series has a lower power budget than 1300. The latter can provide more than 700 watts of power for a wide range of devices.
Both series are available in variants that offer 1G Ethernet, 10G Ethernet, or a mix of both.
The 1300 Series can be stacked and can be used as a single logical switch with the addition of additional devices. Some 1300 series models offer 48 ports and can stack up to 8 devices, making them an attractive option for scalability.
Users can access the switch's management console through a browser, add a Bluetooth dongle, plug in a USB-A port, or for the first time, plug in a USB-C port. The latter is due to the growing popularity of USB-C ports in laptops and the fact that C-C cables are now less difficult to find.
These devices are directly licensed** with no order required. This means that Cisco's latest, state-of-the-art cloud management tools are not automatically available to users of these devices.
However, Cisco has developed a management tool called the Business Dashboard, which is available as a virtual appliance and allows for the creation of different user organizations. A demo seen by the reporter shows that a managed service provider can create a user organization for each customer.
Cisco has also launched the Meraki MX for SMBs, a cloud-managed security and SD-WAN appliance. The appliance includes an application-based firewall as well as built-in content filtering, threat protection, VPN, cellular failover, and VoIP health management.
The Meraki MX is managed through the cloud like other Meraki devices.
The Catalyst 1200 and 1300 were released yesterday and went on sale. Readers searching the web for relevant information may find documents from months ago. Cisco told reporters that the information is not outdated. At that time, the equipment was already completed and ready for sale, but not enough products had been produced, so it was released in advance to facilitate the official release.