I found a Linksys SRW2008P at the markets for $10. That’s 8 1000Base-T gigabit ports with POE and 2 mini-gbics (SFP’s). It also supports 256 VLANs and link aggregation.
Resetting to factory defaults took some reading, and trial and error. The console cable required is a straight through DB9 cable not a cross-over (null modem) cable. I’ve used an old DB9 to RJ45 convertor and changed the pin assignment (pin 2 and 3) to make it compatible with newer Cisco console cables.
The console login/password reset procedure is terrible. Pull the power and open a console session. Plug in the power and press ESC to interrupt the boot and choose “password reset procedure”. Continue booting until you see a login page. From what I worked out it is now asking you for new admin credentials, not the default “admin” / “blank” login. You type the username ‘admin’ and whatever you want the password to be, press ESC to then select ‘Execute’ and press enter. Some clearer instructions on the screen would have made it so much better and the manual also glazes over the finer details.
To get the full use out of this managed switch, you need access to the web interface. That introduces other issues with the firmware it came with:
Boot Version: 1.0.1 (Date: 06-Jun-2006, Time: 17:23:21)
Software Version: 1.0.2 (Date: 12-Jun-2006, Time: 18:01:35)
Upgraded Software Version to: 1.0.4 (Date: 06-Sep-2007, Time: 09:11:40) and the web interface appears to work better with IE 11, but Firefox is still failing.
In summary, it’s a great switch and considering it’s 7-8 years old, it’s still got many features of it’s bigger brother Cisco switches.
Cheers.
hi kristian,
i’m having issues connecting to this router as i bought it cheap. it seems to be set to manual ip as it doesn’t grab any IP from my dhcp and as well it doesn’t have a dhcp server !!
the only way around is serial and i tried db9 female-female cable but no joy,,, i tried usb serial to the console port but nothing show up in putty while booting !
any help will be appreciated
just sorted it my friend,,, thank you for the hint straight db9 cable 🙂
have a lovely day
Sorry for the late response, I’m glad you worked it out. A heads up for you, the ports start to die overtime. I think I’m down to about 4 reliable ports on the switch.