The Cisco Catalyst 4948E Ethernet Switch is built from the start to deliver class-leading, full-featured server-access switching. The switch offers forty-eight 10/100/1000 Gbps RJ45 downlink ports & four 1/10 Gigabit Ethernet uplink ports & is designed to simplify data center architecture & operations by offering service provider-grade hardware & software in a one Rack Unit (1RU) form factor optimized for full-featured Top-of-Rack (To R) data center deployments. The Cisco Catalyst 4948E, with its advanced multicast support, is optimized for multimedia applications. It supports Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM), Source-Specific Multicast (SSM), & Pragmatic General Multicast (PGM), providing end users with additional scalability to support multimedia applications. Also supported are Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) snooping & Multicast Listener Discovery (MLD) snooping in hardware, enhancing performance & reducing network traffic by allowing a switch to dynamically add & remove hosts from a multicast group. The Cisco Catalyst 4948E offers superior per-port Qo S features to help ensure that network traffic is classified, prioritized, & scheduled optimally to efficiently manage bandwidth-intensive multimedia & time-sensitive & mission-critical applications. The Cisco Catalyst 4948E can classify, monitor, & mark incoming packets, allowing the administrator to differentiate traffic flows & enforce policies. Sharing, shaping, & strict-priority configurations determine scheduling of egress traffic.