Cisco EtherSwitch 10/100 high-speed WAN interface cards (HWICs) supported on the Cisco 1800 (modular)/1941, Cisco 2800/2900, and Cisco 3800/3900 series integrated services routers offer small-to-large-size businesses and enterprise branch office customers the option to integrate switching and routing in one device. This combination offers ease of configuration, deployment, and management while using the powerful characteristics of Cisco routing and Cisco Catalyst switching features.

The modular Cisco EtherSwitch HWICs provide line-rate Layer 2 switching across Ethernet ports using Cisco IOS Catalyst Software. Features such as port autosensing, quality of service (QoS), VLAN support from 802.1P and 802.1Q standards, and 802.1D spanning tree protocols are standard on the Cisco EtherSwitch HWIC. The Cisco EtherSwitch HWICs are available in standard 4- or 9-port 10/100BASE-TX switch HWIC and Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) configurations.