Cisco 2960 Set Up

I’ve ordered an 8 port Cisco catalyst so almost there.

Can anyone advise on cable length between router and switch? Has anyone found it makes a discernible difference. It would be a lot neater if I could keep it short, say 0.75m. If a longer cable length has been found to sound better then I’ll live with it. The cable between switch and NDS will be 6m.

I’ll be ordering the BJC6e as recommended here.

Many thanks :+1:

With regard to streamer and switch, for reduced Ethernet modulation power related noise you want to have the lead as long as possible under 100 metres… that might not be practical for you. If you can’t say use 10 metres as a minimum (coiled is fine) , then use whatever length, but you will potentially not be getting the best. Longer runs of Cat5e are better than Cat 6 for example in this regard. (Ie you want more resistive Ethernet cables with thinner wires such as Cat5e uses). But these are SQ tweaks you can play with letter. First gen streamers are more sensitive than the current streamers in this regard. I suspect on an early Naim streamer a coil of 100 metres of certified Cat5e cable will ‘sound’ the most natural… at least it will have the least noise power.

The Ethernet segment between switch and switchport on router, use whatever length you need… and it can be as short as you need… here coupled Ethernet noise is irrelevant.

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Really appreciate you passing on your knowledge and experience on this. 10m coiled it is!

Yes, of course, the older streamers like my NDS. That’s probably most of the difference that people are experiencing. Interesting that you’re using wifi quite a bit. I’ll be glad when I’ve updated my system to the new streaming board tech. No real rush right now tho.

This is actually the second time you’ve had to correct me on this Simon. Thanks for your patience.
And I’m not really confusing the two, I was just attempting to imply that my service is very solid. But as you say, it doesn’t really have anything to do with Wi-Fi reception.

Can anyone point me to a decent/simple set of instructions for these switches? In particular what does the “mode” button on the front do, and how best is it set? POST appears to take about 2 mins for my 2960 8tc l model.

These are commercial grade switches and the assumption is that they would be used under a competent network administrator, so any instructions will assume a certain level of training and experience that your average home user simply won’t have.
With a bit of patience and some help from Google, YouTube etc. you can probably figure out to log in and do the basics, but generally it should work without this if set to factory defaults so probably best left that way.

It’s been reset to factory. And required some presses of the mode button to feed the ndx2. Currently the naim app via my phone is rather large. And jeeps loosing the ndx2. Something I did not see with the el cheapo other switch. But this cisco does sound good. Ime. No worse than el cheapo.

If factory reset, the switch default settings will allow the switch to work in a basic mode.
No buttons can change functionality, but they will affect what the instrumentation displays.
Do remember as default it takes a while for the NDX2 to connect, as the 2960 goes through its loop detection analysis.
As far as configuring these are relatively basic layer 2 devices, if you are familiar with basic switching routing and functionality (ie basic CCENT level) then you can quite easily optimise to suit, just follow the online Cisco 2960 guides. If that means nothing to you I would leave in factory default mode.

Thanks Simon. I’ll fire up Google and see how to play with the cisco. The sound so far means I need to learn how to get the best from it.

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Am I right in thinking the four ports on the right with yellow divider are uplink ports, and my smarthub2 should be connected to one of these? And NDS, TV Box etc connected to any of the bank of 8 ports on the left? Thanks

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There are two dual purpose ports on the R, each can use either an SFP (usually for fibre) or a regular RJ45 Ethernet cable. They are uplink ports, in that they usually run at GB speed even if the other ports are 100, so best used for higher traffic devices, leaving your streamer on a regular port. Having said that, you can use any of the 10 ports for any device and they will still work.

My Cisco 2960 just delivered but not connected yet. This evening I’ll do. If I well understood the link between my router and Cisco can be connected to one of the 8 ports or other 2 in yellow in the right side. The same for all other home devices (TV, PC, NDX2, eg…)

Yes, any port will work. Give the switch a few minutes to start up before using anything, as it takes a little longer to get going than a basic unmanaged switch.

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Mine looks quite different to yours. Mine looks like this…

I may have to learn to play with mine. It feels a bit laggy. I.e. what the phone/tablet shows is not quite what the ndx2 is doing. A real lag when I mute on the phone to the nac282 actually muting any sound. Same when un muting.
Not a massive issue, just really obvious when compared to the cheapo unmanaged switch.
It also has to spend a minute to find the ndx2 when the cable is plugged in. God only knows what it is doing. Again the cheapo switch finds it immediately.

Yes they are uplink ports, but you can connect them anyway you wish in default config.

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That will be nothing to do with the switch in terms of ‘laginess’… that is down to application and how it’s choosing to operate.

As I have said a few times, the segment coming up from cold often takes longer on a commercial grade switch such as these as by default it is doing loop detection before connecting your NDX2. On larger commercial networks a loop can be disasterous.
You can configure the switch to put the port into fast port so as to disable the loop detection.
Cheap consumer switch don’t have such protection so the link comes up straightaway irrespective of whether it would take your network down.

Yes you have a very old model. The white models are much more recent.

Haha. I wondered why it was cheap/ free!

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