Comparisons Between Cisco 3550 and 3560 Switches
Cisco includes the 3550 and 3560 series switches in the CCIE Routing and Switching lab exam.
Cisco is not specific about any particular switch models to expect on the CCIE Routing and
Switching written exam. As a result, it is useful to compare the QoS features of the two switches
that you may encounter in the lab exam. Table 13-9 summarizes the key differences. (The
comparisons listed here assume the Enhanced software image is used on both models of switches.)
Comparison of Cisco 3550 and 3560 Queuing Options
Feature Description 3550 3560
Number of ingress queues 1 2
Number of egress queues 4 4
Queue number of expedite queue 4 Configurable
Granularity for setting queue weights Interface Interface
Frames classified into queues based on… CoS CoS
Granularity for CoS-to-queue mapping Interface Interface
Expedite queue enabled via priority-queue out interface
subcommand
Yes Yes
Ingress policers per port Fast Ethernet/Gigabit Ethernet 8/128 64/64
QoS egress method Policing Shaping or
policing
Congestion avoidance method/number of thresholds per queue WRR/2 WTD/3
Default scheduler WRR SRR
Drop strategy WRED WTD