The Cisco Catalyst 3560 Series is part of a larger and more scalable family of Cisco Catalyst switches that includes the Cisco Catalyst 3750 Series switches with Cisco StackWise technology, and the Cisco Catalyst 4500 and Catalyst 6500 modular switches. United by Cisco IOS Software, the entire family offers industry-leading availability, integrated security, optimized delivery, and manageability.

The Cisco Catalyst 3560 Series is available with standard multilayer software image (SMI). The SMI feature set includes advanced QoS, rate-limiting, ACLs, and basic routing functionality.