How To Setup a Cisco Switch from SCRATCH !!!

We had a new guy start at our work last week and we asked him to setup a Cisco 2960G from scratch. I decided to search the internet real quick and find him a decent guide to help him BESIDES the PDF you can get from Cisco.com because I find those not very useful for setting up switches or routers... Well it turns out I could NOT find a all in 1 basic Cisco Switch setup guide or How To, There was bits and pieces like how to setup vlans here, how to setup trunking on another site but no 1 site had a complete walk through or guide... That's when I knew I would have to write something up something that everyone could understand and reference to whenever they needed to setup a Cisco switch!!! So here we go!!!

How To Setup a Cisco Switch from SCRATCH

Chapter 1: The Differences
There are a few different types of switches. Here are the most common and important things to look for.

a) PoE - "Power Over Ethernet" - PoE can be used with various devices that can be powered over Ethernet. For example a lot of VoIP phones can be powered over Ethernet, What does this mean? This means if you plug your device into the switch with an Ethernet cable such as cat5e cable the device will get power. So if you had a Cisco VoIP phone you would notice there are a couple ports on the back - one if for an AC adapter to give the phone power - that's normally what you see on EVERYTHING electronic is a good old POWER cable and AC power brick.. Well NO MORE!! No need for those power bricks anymore - if you had a PoE switch and you plugged in the phone it would start up and get power over the Ethernet without plugging the phone into the power outlet or supplying any other power source you would normally have to use...

b) G - Gigabit Ethernet - Cisco switches will have a model like, 3560PoE, 2960 and 2960G. The "G" in the model name means the switch is FULL Gigabit, Now does that mean if it has no "G" that the switch is NOT Gigabit, Well that's not always true either because some 10/100 switches still have 2 or 4 ports that are Gigabit. Normally it is used to be an Uplink to another switch to provide faster connection between the two or sometimes the switches will even have fiber connections as well while the other 10/100 ports are for End Users. Some switches have slots where you can pop in cards to fit your needs or as your company grows.

c) IOS - Internetwork Operating System - IOS is a command based interface made by Cisco, This is your bread and butter with almost ALL cisco switches. There different versions of Cisco IOS but for the most part they are still very similar so don't be afraid because most the stuff is the same. Some Cisco siwtches also have an HTTP interface where you can setup and control the switch using a website GUI, For beginners this may feel a lot more comfortable but there is some lack of features and full control that you would have if you were using Cisco IOS, The Cisco Catalyst 500 Express PoE switch is a good example of using HTTP to setup the switch. There tons of commands to remember inside the IOS and it might seem overwhelming at first but once you get comfortable and more familiar with all the commands it really really becomes easy and makes setting up a switch quick and easy once your an expert with IOS.



Next, Chapter 2