I am looking at the Cisco 2960 switches for sale and lots on ebay. Can anyone advise if I buy a used/reconditioned unit is there anything I need to look out for? not many seem to come with a power supply and say they are powered over Ethernet.
Make sure itâs been reset to factory defaults, as doing this is not straightforward. I would avoid a PoE version unless you specifically want to use it to be powered from another switch. Other than that, just plug it in and use it as a regular unmanaged switch.
There is a difference between the unit offering PoE and it requiring PoE, so worth identifying which you want to use.
I initially acquired a PoE output capable 2960 which worked well, but was audibly noisy in my room as one of the internal supplies âsizzledâ quietly so I returned and got full refund and got a non-PoE 2960 which is totally quiet and Iâm very happy with it. Not having another PoE internal supply is one less thing to go wrong and was a suggestion from others on the forum as possibly slightly better.
My version has IEC mains socket - it came âresetâ so ensure with supplier it has that done - it seem almost all have been reset as default is resold by someone handling a lot of units.
Well worth it for me I just plug-in and it was instant upgrade stand-alone with no programming required.
Have you asked the seller if itâs had a factory reset? For an IT professional this would be a very easy thing to do. If it turns out that you need to do it yourself, itâs perfectly possible if you can be bothered, just be prepared for a bit of head scratching.
A factory reset switch should work just like a simple unmanaged switch, just power it up, connect your devices to the ports, and it should work. If any ports donât work, or you get any odd behaviour, it may be a sign that it had a config left by a previous user.
When powered up, they take a few minutes to fully start up, so leave it for a few minutes before you connect anything to it, make sure the lights on the fromt panel have stopped flashing, and it should then work.
If a previous user has configured the switch, it is often necessary to log in and clear it by doing a proper factory reset. Pressing the reset button does not do this.
Resetting the switch deletes the configuration and reboots the switch.
To reset the switch:
⢠Press and hold the Mode button. The switch LEDs begin blinking after about
3 seconds. Continue holding down the Mode button. The LEDs stop blinking
after 7 more seconds, and then the switch reboots.
If you want to do a full reset including clearing out any residual configs left from the previous owner, get hold of the right cable to hook into it, and follow these instructions.
Itâs a bit convoluted and you can probably find other sources to go about it, but with a modicum of computer experience and a starting point of âwhatâs the worst that can happen?â itâs not difficult to get there.
Thatâs interesting. When I got mine I did the reset with the button then got hold of the cable to do the PuTTY config deletes as mentioned above, and the files to delete were still present until manually deleting them.
Holding the mode button down doesnât reset the configurations, it just reboots the switch. Two different things. My main 2960L-16PS I bought used was having all kinds of issues and they didnât clear up until I went in and did a proper reset via Mac Terminal. Holding down the button got me nothing.