Help with 802.1q on Catalyst 2900XL 1

[seong76]

I am fighting voice quality issues on Polycom VoIP phones and I need help with possibly setting up my 2900XL to perform 802.1q. My network is single subnet with 4 x 2900XLs, and the switches are not setup for any VLANs.

I don't have any budget for additional hardware, so those 2900XLs are all I have to work with. Thanks in advance for your feed backs.

 

[seong76]

Oops. I meant The IEEE 802.1P for prioritizing network traffic at the Layer 2

 

[vipergg]

Hopefully you have a newer 8 meg 2924 and not the old 4 meg otherwise you are SOL . If you have a newer 8 meg box you need at least code version 12.0.5 WC3 to get this . Go here to get an idea of what to do .

http://cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/...figuration_guide_chapter09186a008007e838.html

 

[seong76]

Hey vpergg,
Thanks for the reply. I got the 2924-XL running V12.0(5.1)XP with 8MB.
I have some additional questions for the Cisco buffs out there.
-Do I need to have VLANs to run QoS?

-What do I need to have VLANs talk to eachother when I'm only working with 2900XL switches?

 

[vipergg]

You don't , 2900's are layer 2 only switches and you would need either a l2/l3 switch or a router to talk between vlans .
L2/L3 switch-----> trunk to 2900's to talk between the vlans. The layer 3 addressing is done on the router or l2/l3 switch .

 

[seong76]

Great! I'll set aside VLAN out of my equation for now and focus on QoS at L2. Thanks.

 

[kurttorok]

You will need 802.1q VLAN trunks between each switch for Layer 2 QoS. That QoS tags get placed in the 802.1q bytes.

Kurt

 

[seong76]

If I create VLAN trunks between the switches, does that mean I'll have to configure multiple VLANs? My current assumption from the posting is that I can go ahead and configure L2 priority queing for the ports I'm going to use for my SIP phones with out use of vlans.

If I understand Kurt correctly, on top of configuring the ports for priority queueing, I'll have to setup 802.1q vlan trunk ports between my switches?

Thanks Kurt and Thank You all in advance!