Makes no difference for simple use and assuming has been factory reset prior to you using it, use which ever is convenient and your Ethernet connector can fit to…
Don’t worry about the button, that is simply a manual status check button.
Thanks Simon, I had to press the button and move inputs so think it hasn’t been reset. Music is coming from the ND5SX2 so alls well that ends well
Slightly OT, but an issue popped up last night…
Got home to find no internet on the PC; after doing the usual checks still no connection despite having a light at each end of the ethernet cable, on the PC and on the router. It’s plugged into the same Cisco router that the 272 is, that worked fine as did all other wireless devices. Rather than get bogged down in installing drivers etc I swapped the ethernet lead into a spare port on the 2960 and the connection was magically restored.
I’ll try a bit more serious troubleshooting later when I’m back, but is this a known failing of the 2960, or is there a more prosaic explanation?
Do you mean ‘Cisco router’ or are you referring to your Cisco 2960, which is a switch? Assuming the latter…
Does the PC consistently lose its internet connection on one particular port on the switch? If so, maybe that port has been configured by a previous owner in some particular way that’s stopping it working for you, in which case a factory reset should clear it.
Does the PC only lose it’s internet connection, or does it also lose connection to local devices? If it only loses internet, the switch is probably not to blame.
No - this device is an industrial and commercial workhorse the world over - and i suspect much of your world (unless you are in an off grid subsistence farm or commune somewhere) is supported by one or more 2960 switches doing their stuff
It’s a switch, a 2960. Apologies for my loose terminology but this is the Cisco 2960 thread…
My 2960 has worked correctly and consistently since it went in earlier this year. It was sold as a full reset, but regardless I consoled into to it to clear down the residual config settings still present.
This was a one-off with no connection to the net or to the two NAS drives normally mapped to the PC, but the 272 that connects through it worked fine. Device Manager didn’t report any errors or issues but Networks via CP reported No Connection.
I’m not worried. If it fails again I’ll keep swapping till it runs out of spare ports, then either reset it or bin it for the original Netgear switch that did the job previously. My question was to do with the reliability of the 2960, but as SiS says these things are industrial strength devices so should be robust & reliable.
FWIW I have 3 2960s running, and once set up, they have just worked, and have never required a restart or any other attention, which is pretty much what I’d expect of any switch. So I wonder if your problem lies elsewhere.
If you have the skills and/or patience, I guess you could console into the switch and see if you can track down the problem.
I now have two 2960 switches in place and have encountered a problem which I have not been able to resolve but have been able to work around. It’s a very specific problem, and so it may be unlikely that anyone else is similarly affected. The issue may lie elsewhere in my network and may be the ‘fault’ of another device attached to one of my switches, but it is annoying none the less.
I have an Intel NUC (running Roon Rock) attached to one of my switches, along with a number of other devices including the streamer in my 2nd system (Sonore microRendu), a Panasonic Blu-Ray player, a Panasonic 4K Smart TV and a Sky 2Tb Q box. The specific issue I have is that I cannot have both my Sky Q box and my NUC connected to the 2960 switch at the same time. If both are connected, my Roon control devices cannot see or connect to Roon Rock on my NUC. As soon as I disconnect the Sky Q box then Roon Rock immediately becomes available to my Roon control devices.
This problem has existed only since I installed my Cisco 2960 switches. I had no problem whatsoever whilst using my previous TP-Link switches.
This may well not be ‘the fault’’ of the Cisco switch, but it is annoying none the less, and those who have ‘upgraded’ to the Cisco switches often recommended in this forum should be aware that the change may not always be seamless.
My solution is simply to leave my Sky Q box unconnected to the switch unless I specifically need to make use of faster ethernet download speed - something I require only very rarely.
I’ve had something like that happen with my 2960L-16PS gigabyte switch. Even binned a couple of cheap lan cables because I figured it was the cable. I’ve never consoled in (would need to haul the switch up to my son’s room as I only have a Mac) so no idea what’s going on with the ports. I also could only get the SFP uplink to link but not send internet. Otherwise works great and sounds great, and with 16 post not too worried if a couple of them are finicky.
You can console in with a Mac. It’s not hard if you feel a little bit comfortable using a shell (i.e. Terminal app). That’s what I did. I even have a proper USB-C -> Console cable I got from Amazon.
Here’s the basic steps i used to get it working:
- Plug the cable into your mac.
- In terminal, type
ls /dev/tty.usb*
(you should have an entry there for the device. Mine is /dev/tty.usbserial-AL00****) - Run this command with your device name from the ls command above:
screen /dev/tty.usbserial-AL00**** -f 9600,cs8,-parenb,-cstopb,-hupcl - To exit, press ctrl A let go of them then type the letter K and it will close the connection.
From there, do a Google search for Reset a Cisco 2960 Switch To Factory Default Settings (I found Rich Bibby’s blog post and used that) for the console commands you need to do the reset.
Same here, I’ve used SecureCRT (the free trial was enough) to console into a switch from a Mac. It needed a factory reset, and I wanted to get some specific SFPs working, and if I can do it with no real IT skills, anyone can. It did take a couple of attempts and some head scratching, though.
Well you can log into the switch to see what it is doing.
If a device port goes offline, then there will be usually two reasons, because port security is active, or the device has detected a network loop.
If you fully reset a device, then no port security is enabled, but by default loop detection is on.
If you don’t know how to drive a switch, check the port stat status… a spanning tree blocked port will be shown as yellow.
With an industrial grade switch like the 2960 it will be using its various safety mechanisms to protect your network that might otherwise damage your network. A consumer switch might not notice this.
Another issue is is that one of your hosts connected to the switch could be at fault, or be causing a fault in certain scenarios.
#Show interface status err-disabled
Normally returns empty, but might return with an issue of a connected device… such as unreliable link.
If you suspect a wiring fault you can run
#test cable-diagnostics tdr interface fa0/x
Where x is the port number
Then
#show cable-diagnostics tdr interface fa0/x
To see results
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Thanks for this. Will try when I have some spare downtime. Sorry didn’t get back to you earlier.
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