Cisco Catalyst 2960CX-8PC-L

Cisco · compact switch, 8 PoE+ ports, 4 uplink ports · Cisco Catalyst WS-C2960CX-8PC-L

what it is

A compact switch: 269.2 × 44.45 × 238.8 mm, 2.27 kg, fanless, with an internal power supply. Eight gigabit access ports deliver PoE+ power from a shared 124 W budget. In addition there are four uplink ports — two copper and two SFP fiber — which can operate simultaneously and can also serve as access ports.

A 124 W budget means eight ports at 15.4 W or four at 30 W. Eight access points, each requesting the full 30 W, will not fit — the budget counts, not the number of ports.

It is 1U high, but not 19 inches wide. It is mounted on a wall, under a desk, on a rail or on a shelf in a rack. It operates up to 45°C.

Lifecycle: the manufacturer ended sales on April 30, 2024, and releases security fixes until April 30, 2029 — so a firmware update still makes sense for several more years. The successor is the Catalyst C9200CX-8P-2X2G-E. The license is LAN Base, the only one available in this family: Layer 2 switching and static routes only.

what we read from it

We poll this model over SNMP. We collect the state of each port together with speed and duplex, transmitted and received traffic, error counters, system name and firmware version, uptime and availability and the basis on which we assess state.

In addition, the switch provides:

• Actual PoE draw on each port, in milliwatts. This is a different number from the allocated power: an access point with a 15.4 W allocation may draw 2.7 W. Only the actual draw tells you how much headroom is left in the budget.
• A copper cable test with the result available over the network: distance to the fault and the state of each pair — normal, open, short, impedance mismatch, break. An open is also shown for a good cable with nothing plugged in at its far end; the faults are short, break and impedance. A test on a port with an active link briefly drops it.
• LLDP neighbors: name, model and port number of the device on the other end of the cable — including other vendors. LLDP is disabled by default (only CDP is enabled, which sees only Cisco equipment); after enabling it, a neighbor appears after about 30 seconds.
• License level and environmental state.

port layout

From the left: the MODE button, the RJ-45 console port, then eight access ports in two rows of four — odd on top, even on the bottom. On the right, in a single row, the uplink ports: first copper 9 and 10, then SFP fiber 11 and 12. The drawing above is a to-scale schematic made from the front panel dimensions.

Next to the RJ-45 port there is a USB console. Plugging in a USB cable disables the RJ-45 console — a device connected in parallel to a console server then stops responding.

how it behaves after a factory reset

Without a saved configuration the switch configures itself from the network if a cable is plugged in:

• it takes an address from DHCP on VLAN 1,
• it tries to download a configuration file from the TFTP server indicated by DHCP,
• it connects to the manufacturer's Plug and Play service on the internet and identifies itself with its serial number; two time servers that were not there before then appear in the configuration.

A reset is best done with the cable unplugged. The write erase command erases the configuration, but leaves the Plug and Play files in flash memory — for equipment coming from another network they must be removed separately. Saving any configuration disables this mechanism on subsequent boots.

what we cannot read

• Fan speed — there is no fan. An empty fan table is the correct state.
• Uptime from the host resources table — this table always reports zero; uptime comes from the system counter.
• PoE input — the switch powers devices, but does not itself accept PoE.

transceivers tested in this device

Transceivers we checked in this device, and whether the device showed their optical diagnostics (temperature, power, alarm thresholds):

• Finisar FTLF1318P3BTL-CS (1000BASE-LX), firmware 15.2(7)E14: diagnostics read (1 units).
• Cisco SF-SM31020D-GP (1000BASE-LX), firmware 15.2(7)E14: diagnostics not shown (1 units).
• Finisar FTLF8519P2BCL (1000BASE-SX), firmware 15.2(7)E14: diagnostics not shown (2 units).

All transceivers and switches in one place, with filters: what each device shows.

full list of parameters read via CLI and SNMP

The list shows WHAT the device exposes — including parameters we do not use ourselves. There are no values here at all: it is a catalog of capabilities, not a reading from anyone's network. It is not a closed list either — explanation below the table.

428 parameters

List source: reading of 1 working unit (as of 2026-10-18). The list is the sum of what we observed — more units reveal more parameters, so numbers for different models are not directly comparable.