Product review (Cisco CBS250 Switch)

 In this post, I will be reviewing my notes and experience during my work on new switches from Cisco.

the switches that I used to replace old HP switches with.

first of all, the Cisco CBS250 switches has nice white color and beautiful Cisco logo, they come with different sizes supporting from 8 to 48 ports and of course the SFP's.

have a look on a real photo for the product:

 

 

link to these products:

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/switches/business-250-series-smart-switches/index.html?ccid=cc001531

Price starting from: $235.00 USD

Ok, now let's start talking a little bit on the configuration part of the switch:

1. It supports GUI (which is very nice and well structured)

2. SSH and Telnet (Remote)

3. Console

 The switch also comes with a default username and password of (cisco), which you will be requested to change both after your first login.

one of the nice things I noticed is that the switch also has the automatic Baud rate detection, which will allow you connecting to switch without even altering your serial configs.

 

 

 

 

Don't mind the rubbish at the first line, this shows up during switch bootup because the auto detection is not active yet.

 So now let's talk about Network features, starting with the commands that you will need to configure the switch in order to make it ready for work.

1. Add a hostname using the command #hostname xxxxxx

2. Enable SSH if you are willing to connect to it via the SSH #ip ssh serve

then you need to go to:

#line ssh   (no more VTY)

(config-line)#login authentication default  (this will make the switch work with the default authentication method configured)

3. set the management IP address #interface vlan x     #ip address x.x.x.x x.x.x.x

4.set the gateway #ip default-gateway x.x.x.x

Note: at this moment, you would be also able to login to the switch using HTTP/HTTPS (GUI) but of course you need to set the IP address for the management.

Creating the vlans can be done at the beginning because you need to have them ready before you configure the SVI.

 

So now we talk about the Voice VLAN, which you must identify in the switch.

#VLAN 34

#voice vlan ID 34

So might need to add the OUI of the phones if it was not listed in the OUI table:

 

 

Ok, what about the switchports access type? well, below the types you can configure a port according to your needs:

1. Access  (vlan unaware port)

2. Trunk (vlan aware port)

3. General (generic port mode)

4. Customer (customer equipment port)

Note: by default the Switch comes with a Macro enabled and will put interfaces into vlan's automatically and even add a description, but in my case I had to disable it and configure ports according to my requirements.

here is how you disable the Macro globally:

#no macro auto

or you can disable per interface:

#no macro auto smartport

you can also create your own macro:

(config)#macro name SAMER

Ok, which mode to put your interface you need to configure, because for end users usually you need ports to be access ports, but since you need a phone then we used to have switchport voice vlan command before but now, this command is no longer available.

you have the following options:

1. automatic configs using the Macro

2. configure port as trunk (I don't think this is a good idea)

3. configure the port as general mode and use the (tagged option for the voice vlan)

and untagged for the PC and then PVID of the PC vlan.

in case you you won't be needing the Phone with your port then make it as Access mode only.

and of course the Uplinks must be Trunk.

here is an example:

interface GigabitEthernet1
 description DESKTOP
 port security max 2
 switchport mode general
 switchport general allowed vlan add 110 tagged  (Voice)
 switchport general allowed vlan add 16 untagged (User PC)
 switchport general pvid 16
 no macro auto smartport

 Lot's of configuration syntax has changed. for example, port security is not like before:

 

 

the modes changed permanent and lock  (not sure if this was changed longtime ago or I just didn't use Cisco switches for a longtime!)

 I found that removing the tab option which shows the options of the syntax for the available commands or completes the command is a bit annoying because it is not working like before.

 Overall, Cisco Switches always great, hardware and software and also the communities that can respond to your questions are really great.

you can't find this on other vendors forums.

 

Lastly
I want to talk about the GUI which I found pretty nice:

 you can choose HTTPS from the window itself as below

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 The design is well structured as you can see below and the interface is really interactive:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well, this is all I have for now, I hope this was useful!

 

Samer R. Saleem