Cisco extends its Catalyst 2950 Series Intelligent Ethernet Switches with new stackable models that provide wire-speed Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet connectivity for midsized networks. The Catalyst 2950 Series is an affordable product line that brings intelligent services, such as advanced quality of service (QoS), rate-limiting, security filters, and multicast management, to the network edge - while maintaining the simplicity of traditional LAN switching. When a Catalyst 2950 Switch is combined with a Catalyst 3550 Series Switch, the solution enables IP routing from the edge to the core of the network. Embedded in the Catalyst 2950 Series is the Cisco Cluster Management Suite (CMS) Software, which allows users to simultaneously configure and troubleshoot multiple Catalyst desktop switches using a standard Web browser. Cisco CMS Software provides new configuration wizards that greatly simplify the implementation of converged applications and network-wide services.The complete set of switches offer network managers flexibility when selecting a migration path to Gigabit Ethernet. The dual GBIC-based Gigabit Ethernet implementation provides customers with tremendous deployment flexibility - allowing customers increased availability with the redundant uplinks. In sum, the configuration permits customers to implement one type of stacking and uplink configuration today, while preserving the option to migrate to another configuration in the future. High levels of stack resiliency can also be implemented by deploying dual redundant Gigabit Ethernet uplinks, a redundant GigaStack GBIC loopback cable, UplinkFast and CrossStack UplinkFast technologies for high-speed uplink and stack interconnection failover, and Per VLAN Spanning Tree Plus (PVST+) for uplink load balancing.