Managed switches always support Layer 2 bridging, but Layer 3 routing must be explicitly enabled, first for the managed switch as a whole, and then for each port that is to be part of the routed network.
The configuration commands enable IP routing on ports 1/0/2,1/0/3, and 1/0/5. The router ID will be set to the managed switch’s management IP address, or to that of any active router interface if the management address is not configured.
After the routing configuration commands have been issued, the following functions will be active:
- IP forwarding, responsible for forwarding received IP packets.
- ARP mapping, responsible for maintaining the ARP Table used to correlate IP and MAC addresses. The table contains both static entries and entries dynamically updated based on information in received ARP frames.
- Routing Table Object, responsible for maintaining the common routing table used by all registered routing protocols.
You can then activate RIP or OSPF, used by routers to exchange route information, on top of IP Routing. RIP is more often used in smaller networks, while OSPF was designed for larger and more complex topologies.
Note: RIP/OSPF is not supported on the M4100 or M7100 switches.
The following figure shows a Layer 3 switch configured for port routing. It connects three different subnets, each connected to a different port.
For more information, see the following support articles:
- How do I enable routing for my managed switch using CLI commands?
- How do I enable routing for my managed switch using the web interface?
This article applies to the following managed switches and their respective firmware:
- M5300 - firmware version 10.0.0.x
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- M5300-28G (GSM7228S)
- M5300-5G (GSM7252S)
- M5300-28G3 (GSM7328Sv2h2)
- M5300-52G3 (GSM7352Sv2h2)
- M5300-28G_POE+ (GSM7228PSv1h2)
- M5300-52G-POE+ (GSM7252PSv1h2)
- M5300-28GF3 (GSM7328FSv2)
- M4100 - firmware version 10.0.1.x
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- M4100-26G (GSM7224v2h2)
- M4100-50G (GSM7248v2h2)
- M4100-26G-POE (GSM7226Pv1h1)
- M4100-50G-POE+ (GSM7248Pv1h1)
- M4100-26G-POE (FSM7226Pv1h1)
- M4100-50-POE (FSM7250Pv1h1)
- M4100-D12G (GSM5212v1h1)
- M4100-D10-POE (FSM5210Pv1h1)
- M7100 - firmware version 10.0.1.x
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- M7100-24X (XSM7224)
- XSM7224S - firmware version 9.0.1.x