We often get asked what the difference is between a Cisco WS-C2948G-L3 and a WS-C2948G. The most obvious is the L3 on the end of that part number. But what exactly does L3 mean?

Here are the exact descriptions taken from Cisco's website.

WS-C2948G - Derived from Catalyst 4000
-Supervisor Engine I
-48 10/100BaseTX switch ports + 2 1000BaseX Gigabit Interface Converter (GBIC) switch ports

WS-C2948G-L3 - Derived from Catalyst 8540
-48 10/100BaseTX Ethernet processor interface (EPIF) + 2 1000BaseX GBIC Gigabit processor interface (XPIF) Layer 3 switched interfaces

The Cisco WS-C2948G-L3 is a Layer 3 switch and runs Cisco IOS Software while the Cisco WS-C2948G is a Layer 2 switch and runs Catalyst 4000 software.