In today’s fast-paced business environment, business owners are becoming more selective in IT investment, including the network infrastructure. The network is a critical platform for business productivity, and a fast, reliable, and secure network is more important than ever to help you stay ahead of the competition and grow your business. With a limited budget, getting the most value for your money becomes especially important.
For businesses requiring high performance, security, and manageability from network switches, fully managed switches are an excellent choice. However, they also typically come with high price tags. Smart switches are lower-priced alternatives, but performance and features are usually sacrificed. Cisco® 220 Series Smart Plus Switches bridge the gap between managed and smart switches to offer you the best of both worlds. They provide the higher levels of security, management, and scalability that you expect from managed switches, while maintaining the affordability of smart switches.
Cisco 220 Series Smart Plus Switches
The Cisco 220 Series, part of the Cisco Small Business line of network solutions, are a series of affordable smart switches equipped with enhanced security, intelligence, and performance. For small and medium-sized businesses running on a tight budget but still requiring a solid network, these switches deliver an excellent combination of features, performance, and ease of use to build a fast, reliable, and highly secure network - at a lower price than managed switches.
The Cisco 220 Series includes a broad range of smart switches that provide 24 to 50 ports of Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet access with extensive Power over Ethernet (PoE) options. With enhanced features like access control list (ACL), command line interface (CLI) and Power over Ethernet Plus (PoE+), these switches can not only improve the productivity for your business today, but also meet the evolving network demands in the future.
Business Applications
With Cisco 220 Series Switches, you can not only build an efficient and reliable network to connect the workforce, but also advanced solutions to deliver data, voice, and video services on a converged infrastructure. Get the best value for your money by improving the productivity of employees. Possible deployment scenarios include:
- Secured desktop connectivity. Cisco 220 Series Switches can quickly and reliably connect employees working in small offices with each other and with all of the servers, printers, and other devices they use. With device authentication and access control, you can maintain the integrity of key business information while keeping you employees connected and productive. - Flexible wireless connectivity. With PoE+ support, and comprehensive security and quality of service (QoS) capabilities, Cisco 220 Series Switches provide a solid foundation to add business-grade wireless to the network. You can easily move up to a cutting-edge 802.11ac wireless access point to increase workforce productivity without worrying about power and throughput. - Unified communications. The Cisco 220 Series Switches provide QoS features to automatically prioritize delay-sensitive traffic to help you easily deploy an IP-based communication solution on a converged network. PoE+ support can enable IP cameras and videophones to be easily added to your current network. Cisco offers a complete portfolio of IP telephony and other unified communications products designed for small businesses. Cisco 220 Series Switches have been rigorously tested to help ensure easy integration and full compatibility with these and other vendor products.
Raising the Bar for Smart Switches
Smart switches are typically priced low but are limited in functionality and scalability. Cisco 220 Series Smart Plus Switches raise the bar for the smart switches by providing additional features and enhancements, including:
- A higher level of security and intelligence. ACLs and flow-based QoS give you more control over network performance, maintain the integrity of key business information, and can enable higher network efficiency. - Simple and flexible management. Cisco 220 Series Switches are easy to deploy and use, not only for small, self-installed deployment by non-IT professionals, but also for mid-scale deployment by IT engineers. These switches provide more management options like Cisco CLI, Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), Cisco Prime™ LAN Management System (LMS) integration, besides the intuitive, web-based interface and Cisco FindIT utility. - Power Over Ethernet Plus. PoE+ streamlines the deployment for wireless access points, IP telephony, and video surveillance by allowing power and data to run over a single network cable. In addition to PoE support on all copper ports, Cisco 220 Series Switches also support PoE+ on selected ports, which is up to 30 watts of power per port. PoE+ can enable deployments for 802.11ac wireless access points, Pan Tilt Zoom (PTZ) IP cameras, videophones, and thin client devices, delivering more flexibility and investment protection.
In addition, the Cisco 220 Series provides a rich set of features that help you create business-class networks. These features deliver a comprehensive solution to simplify the operation, increase uptime, and ultimately get your business better connected to employees, customers, and suppliers. Some primary features include:
High performance and reliability. Cisco 220 Series Switches have been tested to deliver the high availability and performance that users have come to expect from Cisco switches. The switches speed up file transfer times, keep vital business applications available, and help your employees respond more quickly to customers and each other. With enhanced QoS capabilities, the Cisco 220 Series also gives you the flexibility to manage and prioritize high-bandwidth traffic so you can easily integrate all the business communications and connectivity needs on a single converged infrastructure.
Optimal energy efficiency. Cisco 220 Series Switches are designed with Energy Efficient Ethernet (IEEE 802.3az) and Energy Detect support on all models, as well as fanless designs on selected models. These designs help you save operational expenses and reduce your environmental footprint.
Enhanced network security. The Cisco 220 Series Switches provide new levels of security for smart switches and deliver more ways to safeguard your network.
- Extensive ACLs can restrict sensitive portions of the network from unauthorized users and guard against network attacks.
- Support for network security applications such as IEEE 802.1X and port security can tightly limit access to specific segments of your network.
- Guest virtual LANs (VLANs) let you provide Internet connectivity to nonemployee users while isolating critical business services from guest traffic.
- Security mechanisms such as broadcast/multicast/unknown unicast storm control and Bridge Protocol Data Unit (BPDU) guard can protect the network from invalid configurations or malicious intent.
- Denial-of-service (DOS) attack prevention helps to increase uptime in the event of a network attack.
- Embedded security can protect management data traveling to and from the switch and encrypt network communications.
- Protect management sessions using RADIUS, TACACS+, and support local database authentication as well as secure management communication over SSL, SSH, and SNMPv3.
Easy configuration and management. Cisco 220 Series Switches are designed to be easy to deploy and use by small- and medium-sized businesses or the partners that manage them. The simple and intuitive web-based interfaces allow even users without IT expertise to configure, manage, and troubleshoot the switch in minutes. Other ease-of-use features include:
- Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP) and Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP-MED). Automatically detect all the devices connected to your network. Then automatically configure the switch itself with the appropriate settings and instruct the end devices on the appropriate voice VLAN or QoS parameters to use.
- Cisco FindIT Network Discovery Utility. This feature works through a simple toolbar on the user's web browser to discover Cisco devices on the network and display basic information, such as serial numbers and IP addresses. This aids in quicker configuration and deployment of Cisco Small Business products.
Advanced network management capabilities. Cisco 220 Series Switches provide more flexibility for network management through:
- CLI. The switches can be managed using CLI. This can enable scripted or automated deployment for network professionals.
- Remote management. Using SNMP, you can set up and manage all switches and other Cisco devices in your network remotely.
- Dual image support. With the ability to maintain two images in permanent storage instead of only a single image that is traditionally supported on smart switches, you can perform software upgrades without taking the network offline or worrying about an outage because of a bad image file. This reduces switch downtime when the firmware is being upgraded or downgraded.
- Dual-configuration files support. Configure the device, validating that it is done correctly and then save this configuration to become effective after reboot. Additionally, a mirror configuration file provides automatic backup of the latest stable configuration file.
- IPv6 support. Cisco 220 Series Switches provide native support for IPv6, as well as the previous IPv4 standard. As a result, you can migrate to the next generation of networking applications and operating systems without an equipment upgrade.
Additional Gigabit uplink ports Cisco 220 Series Switches provide more ports per switch than other switches typically in the market, giving you more flexibility to connect and empower your business. All models features two Gigabit Ethernet combo ports in addition to the 24 or 48 copper ports, instead of traditional devices that offer two shared uplink ports with 22 or 46 ports. The mini-Gigabit Interface Converter (mini-GBIC) expansion slots in the combo ports give you the option to add fiber optic uplink connectivity to the switch. With the ability to increase the connectivity range of the switches, you have more flexibility to design your network around your unique business environment, and to easily connect switches on different floors or across the business.
IP telephony support. Cisco 220 Series Switches include embedded QoS intelligence to prioritize delay-sensitive services such as voice and video. They can simplify unified communications deployments, and help ensure consistent network performance for all services. 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 220 Series Switches offer the reliable performance, investment protection, and peace of mind you expect from a Cisco switch. They have undergone rigorous testing to help ensure easy integration and compatibility with other Cisco networking and communications products, including the complete Cisco Small Business portfolio.
Cisco Limited Lifetime Hardware Warranty. The Cisco 220 Series switches come with Cisco Limited Lifetime Hardware Warranty. This includes limited lifetime hardware warranty with return to factory replacement (one-year limited warranty for fans and power supplies) and a 90-day limited software warranty. Additionally, Cisco offers software 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.
Cisco Small Business products are supported by professionals in Cisco Small Business Support Center locations worldwide who are specifically trained to understand your needs. Community-based online support is also provided through the award winning Cisco Support Community.
