Cisco Catalyst WS-C3850-48U-E 48x RJ-45 1Gb UPoE - Ethernet Switch

The Cisco Catalyst 3850-48U-E (WS-C3850-48U-E) is an excellent switch due to its integrated wireless capabilities, high-performance UPOE support, and advanced stacking and foundational features, making it a superb choice for modern, converged enterprise campus networks. Its integrated wireless capabilities allow for a seamless wired and wireless experience, with full visibility and control of wireless traffic directly from the switch, simplifying operations, enhancing security, and enabling consistent policy application across both domains. The high-performance UPOE support on all 48 ports (delivering up to 60W per port) provides unparalleled power delivery capabilities, eliminating the need for separate power injectors for high-power devices and simplifying network design and deployment for next-generation endpoints. Furthermore, its advanced stacking capabilities with Cisco StackWise-480 technology offer a 480 Gbps stacking bandwidth, providing high scalability and resilience by allowing up to 9 switches to operate as a single logical unit. Combined with its modular uplinks, redundant power supplies, and comprehensive Layer 3 features with an Enterprise license, these attributes ensure a highly available, flexible, and powerful network access layer.
The Cisco Catalyst 3850-48U-E (WS-C3850-48U-E) is perfect for:

• Converged Wired and Wireless Networks: This switch is an ideal solution for organizations aiming to truly unify their wired and wireless infrastructure onto a single, cohesive platform. By integrating the wireless controller directly into the switch, it significantly simplifies network operations, streamlines troubleshooting, and ensures consistent security policies and quality of service (QoS) are applied uniformly across both wired and wireless endpoints. This eliminates the need for separate wireless LAN controllers, reducing complexity and operational costs.
• High-Density Access Layer Deployments with Advanced Power Needs: With its 48 Gigabit Ethernet ports offering Universal Power over Ethernet (UPOE), this switch is perfectly suited for powering a diverse and growing array of high-wattage devices directly from the network. This includes power-hungry IP phones, video conferencing endpoints, compact virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) clients, LED lighting, building management systems sensors, and advanced wireless access points. The ability to deliver up to 60W per port simplifies cabling, reduces the need for external power adapters, and enables flexible placement of endpoints, driving down deployment costs.

Next-Generation Wireless Deployments and Mobility: As the campus network evolves to support more pervasive wireless access, the integrated wireless controller of the Catalyst 3850 becomes invaluable. It supports a substantial number of access points (up to 50 per switch or 200 per stack) and thousands of wireless clients, providing centralized control, intelligent roaming, and advanced radio resource management. This ensures seamless mobility, optimized wireless performance, and consistent user experience even in high-density wireless environments. High-Performance Campus Edge and Aggregation: Delivering significant switching capacity and a high forwarding rate, this switch can comfortably handle the increasing bandwidth demands at the access layer and even in smaller aggregation layers. It provides the necessary throughput for large volumes of user and application traffic, ensuring that performance bottlenecks are avoided and critical business applications run smoothly, maintaining overall network health and responsiveness. Rich Media, Video, and Collaboration Services: The combination of high-bandwidth Gigabit Ethernet ports, robust QoS capabilities, and UPOE makes this switch an excellent foundation for deploying and supporting latency-sensitive applications such as voice over IP (VoIP), high-definition video conferencing, and other real-time collaboration tools. UPOE reliably powers necessary collaboration endpoints, while intelligent QoS mechanisms ensure that critical voice and video traffic is prioritized, guaranteeing a superior user experience.