Cisco IOS Layer 2 switches have physical ports for devices to connect. These ports do not support Layer 3 IP
addresses. Therefore, switches have one or more switch virtual interfaces (SVIs). These are virtual interfaces
because there is no physical hardware on the device associated with it. An SVI is created in software.
The virtual interface provides a means to remotely manage a switch over a network using IPv4. Each switch comes
with one SVI appearing in the default configuration "out-of-the-box." The default SVI is interface VLAN1.
Note: A Layer 2 switch does not need an IP address. The IP address assigned to the SVI is used to remotely access
the switch. An IP address is not necessary for the switch to perform its operations.