New Switches for my Home Network - Cisco Business 250 & 350 Series!
Вставка
- Опубліковано 27 чер 2024
- In this video we take a look at the new switches that I have bought to upgrade my home network from the Cisco Business CBS350 and CBS250 ranges. We'll talk about what I've bought, take a look at the hardware and take a look at the initial setup process. Then, in the next video, we'll install them all!
Buy on Amazon (Affiliate):
- CBS350-12NP-4X: geni.us/YnP0
- CBS350-12XT: geni.us/6ZVqo
- CBS250-24T-4X: geni.us/RP5OYi
- CBS250-16T-2G: geni.us/ZLjI
www.camerongray.me/
/ camerongray1515
Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction
01:18 - My Requirements
03:32 - Cisco Business Switch Product Range
10:48 - CBS350-12XT
12:43 - CBS350-12XT - Fan Replacement
15:10 - CBS350-12XT - Hardware Tour
16:55 - CBS350-12NP-4X
20:48 - CBS250-24T-4X
23:16 - Different Casing Designs
28:32 - CBS250-16T-2G
32:22 - Initial Setup & Web Interface
43:32 - CLI Demo
48:02 - Built in Cable Length Measurements
53:00 - Initial Setup using Serial Console
58:48 - Conclusion
AFFILIATE LINKS NOTICE:
Product links under this video marked “(Affiliate)” are affiliate links where I may receive a small commission on qualifying sales. Affiliate programs that I am a member of include, but are not limited to: Amazon Associates, eBay Partner Network and AliExpress Affiliates.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Purchasing through these affiliate links will not cost you any more money, however the commission earned significantly helps fund the production of videos on my channel. - Наука та технологія
Buy on Amazon (Affiliate):
- CBS350-12NP-4X: geni.us/YnP0
- CBS350-12XT: geni.us/6ZVqo
- CBS250-24T-4X: geni.us/RP5OYi
- CBS250-16T-2G: geni.us/ZLjI
"no primary cloud configuration"
"No silly firmware subscription nonsense."
I love it! Thanks Cameron. Definitely resonates 💯
Very nice! Just upgraded my home network from the older SG350X line to the new CBS switches last year. Had to wait months to get them because they were out of stock everywhere, so someone out there is definitely using them. Running a CBS350-48NGP-4X, CBS350-24XTS, CBS350-24NGP-4X, and a CBS220-24P-4X. I hadn't noticed the difference between the 350 and 250 when ordering but my 220 looks like the 350s and mounts flush at the front. Both the 350s and 220 have fans for cooling on the side of the cases. The mesh on the top of the 250s makes it look like they are passively cooled.
(1:45) I agree! My previous service provider provided a plastic D-Link network switch for their pay TV (IP-based) and bought additional ones from the same range to match, but when I switched ISPs, the one I switched to provided a metal TP-Link network switch instead and explained that the previous ISP's switch caused latency issues with the pay TV infrastructure they used. As such, I replaced the other D-Link switches with matching TP-Link switches.
The same applies to the multi-monitor setup I use with my main PC, in which I have matching 2012-2013 Dell U and P series monitors because I use a mix of different screen resolutions and they have them with consistent design language.
(22:26) My guess is that Amazon wanted to sell them off quickly in order to free up space in their warehouses.
yeah you make a great point about subscriptions, best to check before buying !
I have a CBS250-16T-2G as my main switch in my home office and a CBS350-8T-E-2G under the stairs connected to my Poweredge server.
With these switches you can manage them via the CLI or Web gui and there is also a mobile app as well.
I have a deployment of these in a business park (CBS350, CBS250, SG350, SG250) and they are dang good for what they are.
Hey great video! It's a topic that is not covered much. After covid with people working from home, you want the same specs at home as you had at the office. And two port enterprice switches are not really a thing yet. I like your thoughtproces in choosing these. Most home users don't have acces to getting contracts for switches even if they wanted to. And cloud management does not make sense for home use either.
I'm in the proces of upgrading my home network. I use a firepower firewall allready. Still have to decide about routing and switching. Searching for a balance between features, powerconsumption, fannoise and price....
Thanks for your input!
Having been swapping OEM fans in enterprise kit for home use since forever, take a look at Noctua 40mm fans. Highly recommended. Very quiet. The NF-A4-20 or NF-A4-10 - excellent fans to reduce noise. 3 and 4 pin versions. 👌🏻
The Sunon fans (a lot of which online are fake) have an annoying ticking noise / bearing noise, combined with not a huge improvement in overall noise.
Food for thought!
Those Noctua fans are usually my "go-to" for this sort of thing, however for this I wasn't convinced they'd be high enough airflow. The original fans from this switch are rated at 15.8 CFM, the Sunons I installed were 10.8 CFM whereas the A4x20 is only 5.5 CFM. I also read some stuff around how the switch uses the current drawn by the fan to establish fan health so I was also worried that the Noctuas may draw too little power and trigger a fan fault detection. Next time I have some of those Noctuas spare I might pop them in and give them a go since they definitely would be quieter, but I didn't want to spend close to £30 on them only to have them not be suitable. I bought the Sunon Fans from DigiKey so I'd like to think they'd be genuine.
the ticking noise is PWM on the 12v, you can stuff a capacitor in there to mute it
Interesting, I did suspect that it was some sort of low frequency PWM since when holding both fans I could feel a relatively low frequency vibration to them when running at lower speeds but not when maxed out. Presume I'd have the same issue with any other fans? I'm already planning on sound insulating the rack that it's in so hopefully that'll mostly deaden the sound but if not I might look into the capacitor option you mentioned.
Also try injecting some GA-10 Molybond into the bearing.
The 2960cx and 3560cx are also nice and fanless! Usually cheap to get used. Recently replaced Unifi with Cisco Aironet 2802i (ME) and 3650 switch.
I also thought about getting those Cisco business switches, but since they lack some of the features of Cisco iOS (like the Cisco Catalyst switches) and aren't that cheap, I decided to get some Brocade ICX 6450 and 6430 switches (the 6450 even supports layer 3 routing :D). But these are best configured through the CLI (serial / telnet / ssh), so they won't be good for beginners.
as a Cisco engineer the guy has come on leaps and bounds over the last few years, great to setup and configure from it , but I would suggest also looking at the config when you do this so you see the cli way of doing stuff
Yeah, I only demonstrated the UI first since it's the way most beginners would use a switch like this. Personally I configured these purely from the CLI. I actually ended up making a spreadsheet of all the port/patch/vlan mappings and using some VSCode multi-line editing fun, converted them into config I could paste into the CLI, saved a tonne of time!
Thank god for a serial port and no cloud silliness.
I bought a few of the 250 series switches at work yesterday, Incredible timing!
As a follow up, the 250 series we have allow the ears to be mounted flush with the front of the switch
Interesting, is it just the ears that have changed? Hopefully this means they're about to release the updated ears as a separate product as they've been promising!
@@camerongray1515 Yeah just the ears, the whole bracket is longer so it locates into the switch at the same position as yours, but the metal extends further out, keeping the ears flush with the front. It's not possible to mount it offset out of the rack anymore.
That does mean with the ears on the back it holds the switch deeper into the rack, which I guess isn't as much of an problem if your rack is big enough to take rear mounted kit.
Looks like they've made a few changes, it doesn't have a mini-USB serial connection, just the RJ45 serial and USB-A port. Though I can't say I'll miss the mini-USB... Aruba have had USB-C on their switches for ages!
The manufacture date for this switch is April 2023.
I really enjoy these long in-depth videos. An hour-long, on switches! - Awesome.
nice video mate
Thank you for this video. Really interesting. I was planning to move away from my SG250 switches in favour of a more centralised solution such as Unifi or Omada. Now I'm having doubts :D
These SG250s I have, have been working flawlessly the past 4 years. Only firmware updates every now and then seem to go wrong so having good backups is a must (or scripts to restore the whole setup ;) ).
The olds SG250s don't have the strange rack ear offset you show in the video, meaning the SB250 won't fit in my rack :/
Anyway, this will be an interesting series of videos, so looking forward to what's next ...
ive been thinking about getting a new switch to replace the 2 8-port unmanaged ones i currently have (which are sat on top of each other)
I already have a use lined up for one of those 8 port switches, as after recently done away with a mesh WiFi system i had (which conviniently gave me extra network ports), i now need to put in a switch where one of the WiFi nodes was (i say WiFi node, but it was actually a wireless router that was acting as a node, im still using the main router from the mesh setup i had)
I'm almost done migrating my network away from assorted manufacturers and towards entirely MikroTik for hardline. Just need a Mikrotik CRS328-24P-4S+RM to finish it up... for now. But i'll have my clusters, NAS, Computers, TVs, Pi's, and then cameras and mesh wifi on PoE.
4U total used on MikroTik, 2U patch panels, 4U for my 12 Lenovo M900 cluster, and 2U for UPS.
My 12U rack will be full. and I'll be looking for a deal on either a full or half rack going forward.
4 x 48 port stacked, that is quite a big SME :-)
37:57 I really like the way OpenWrt handles it, and it's the only equipment that I've seen do it like this way - where whenever you make a change, it goes into a config buffer, so you can copy the commands its going to execute for later, or hit apply, at which point it'll give you 90 seconds to log back in, and if you don't it'll revert the changes.
Still would be nice to combine this with something like startup/running config (i.e. if youre on VLAN 1, and you break VLAN 2 with your config changes, there's still an easy revert method).
Wonder if there's going to be a network equipment vendor with full git-like source control :^)
That sounds pretty similar to how VyOS handles it which is probably my favourite version of this idea - When you make changes they don't apply until you run the "commit" command and then doesn't save to the startup config until you issue the "save" command. There is also a "commit-confirm" which will apply your changes but if you don't issue a "confirm" command within 10 minutes (or another time you specify) the device will reboot and therefore load the previously stored config.
As for git, obviously it's not a thing on embedded devices such as this but I've actually used it on x86 based routers for things like managing firewall config and DNS zone files - works extremely well and gives a clear audit trail!
Most enterprise switches I've used don't save the changes to the running into the startup config by default, which is brilliant when you f-up and need to clear the change, but horrible when you forget to save the startup config and you come back from a power outage (or bumped cable) to find a misconfiguration/loop/hell on earth
Where are the fans mounted and how is the air flow, front to rear or side to side?
personally really like Juniper switches. They allow writing configuration without it being applied until you commit it, it also does some config error checking to help stop you borking the switch and losing network connectivity.
T
Only issue is there is no reasonably priced oprions
@@balla2172 eBay is the best place 👍
For the first one why with all that space on the front did they put the console on the back!
I got cisco sg350 28 switch. This cbs model was not available at this time in my country.
I have multiple SG300's in my home with a 52 port being my main switch. I love the interface. Whole house is split into many different vlan's. They are about to go EOL and these are my next path. Never interested in the Unifi stuff.
Since you installed, have you noticed if your electric bill has gone up? My network is a bunch of switches and at some point, I'd like to have just 1 POE switch.
Half the novelty of Unifi is the fact it's a single ecosystem. Routers, switches, access points, cameras, etc. You don't need to have several management controllers, keep track of equipment inventory and IP allocation on it's own. I know you're a tinkerer, but it feels like you're taking what is a really well thought out product line and making it far harder just because you can.
UniFi is great and it's still my recommendation for many situations, but it's not the only option and has many limitations, especially when it comes to their routing products. The point of this project is to allow me to try out a different option and see how I find it, it will also give me a lot of additional flexibility to play with and produce future videos on. I feel like UA-cam is saturated with home networking videos where UniFi is pitched as the only viable option, I wanted to take a look outside of that.
While the tight integration within UniFi is great, it does have the downside of lock-in (either enforced, or psychological). If I want to add a new camera, I need to buy a UniFi one, I can't use a cheaper/more suitable one from a third party with Protect. If I want to add a switch or upgrade my AP - even though there's nothing stopping me from using a non-UniFi option, it then doesn't show up in the dashboard which makes me feel the urge to buy a UniFi option, even if the other options are better suited to my use case.
All in one but at what cost, it lacks many things cisco dont
UniFi has decent wireless AP’s, but their switches and gateway are garbage.
How to find serial number of cbs350? In command or application?
Those switches seem really nice! But I wish there would be some that can run BGP... Every switch I know of that does BGP is super expensive and uses a lot of energy... :(
4:20 point on that, the Cisco SB 1000 do run full IOS with a few minor differences
I think you're thinking of the Catalyst 1000 series, the SB 1000 doesn't exist. It does run IOS and is often advertised alongside the small business switches since it's an entry level into the Catalyst line without the same licensing requirements as higher end Catalyst switches, but they're still very much a separate product range. They look like great switches but they didn't have any multi-gig copper options so I stuck with the CBS range.
@@camerongray1515 I think you might be right on the Catalyst 1000 series
Great stuff. I had Unifi for about 8 month a couple of years back. It was good for about 6 months and then it went down hill very quickly. Nothing but grief and I do have plenty of network experience. I went back to my Cisco SG2xx/3xx issues. I have upgraded to the CBS since I needed some POE and such. I looked into some other brands and was disappointed with many, price, cloud only or crazy boot up times. I have no regrets in buying the Cisco CBS switched. Mine are CBS-250 series and fir my needs. I have been using pfSense as my firewall for over 7 years now and very happy with it. Would not touch Unifi with a 50ft. overcharged cattle prod. We pay a lot for these switches and they stick in cheap noisy fans. My biggest peeve with the CBS series is the stupid design of the rack mounting. The SG2xx series was just fine. Flush mount but also turn the the mounting plate 90 degrees and I can mount to a wall or such. New design, you can't rotate the mounting bracket.
I don't actually have any sort of issue with UniFi, it's worked great for me for years, I just fancied a change.
As for the rack mounting, it's definitely annoying - I suspect they've just reused the Catalyst 1000 casing which mounts more like a traditional Catalyst switch. For vertical mounting you can get vertical rack mount brackets such as this: www.comms-express.com/products/datacel-uk-made-19-inch-mounting-bracket/ in various sizes. I tend to use these over rotating the ears (even where it's possible) since it can be fixed to the wall once and the device can easily be removed and reinstalled over and over again. Whereas screwing through the lugs into a wall means that you're going to have to take screws in and out of the wall which isn't ideal for repeated removal/installation.
In terms of the fans, it's not that the fans are cheap, the original fans in my CBS350-12XT were relatively high quality ball bearing Delta fans that cost over £13 each. For high end networking/server kit, the manufacturers focus on installing fans that are going to be reliable for long term, 24/7 operation vs focusing on quietness since the vast majority of these devices will end up shoved in comms rooms and cabinets away from people.
How much does it cost you to run these per month roughly?
Can't wait to try out these kind of switches. I've been messing with the cat3k series switches (layer 3) in school. And got some 3560x switches from the 2nd hand market for my CCNA. Can't wait to see these on the used market. Interesting why they used U-Boot to boot their OS, (usually used to boot Linux). Interesting.
When dealing with ports, was the long prefixes required or does it work with just gi, fi and te? (as listed)
Just checked and the shorter prefixes do work!
Right, that was what I expected from ancient Cisco memories... When fe vs fa was a thing.
What app are you using to measure the noise levels?
It's called "Decibel X" - no idea how accurate it is but it works fine for comparisons like this.
Please help for mac acl list
Didn't actually know Cisco did the line of switches. I knew about Meraki but im sure that's still subscription based
Yeah, they really don't advertise these particularly well since they'd probably rather push small businesses onto Meraki and charge them for licence fees. Meraki is basically the polar opposite of everything I believe in - it's one thing having an optional cloud service or charging for ongoing updates, but Meraki takes it further and requires an ongoing subscription to even use a device. If they stop supporting a particular device or prices increase to an unaffordable level, you literally need to replace the hardware that you bought outright, it's useless without a subscription! I imagine it's fine for some businesses since it's so easy to deploy and they can probably save on staff costs by virtue of it being easier to manage, but it's not something I can see myself ever recommending to someone.
Obviously in the current 'post-apocalyptic killowatt hour' world that the UK now lives in ... do you have the power consumption figures for these devices at idle and under moderate load ? :)
I feel noise and power factors into a lot of home switch decisions these days...
I measured the power consumption initially when playing about with them, then appear to have completely forgotten what it was! The datasheet details a "worst case" power consumption for each of the models which would be with all the ports linked at their maximum speed: www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/switches/business-350-series-managed-switches/datasheet-c78-744156.html. Definitely not the lowest but also not nearly as deadly as a lot of the second hand enterprise gear that people use.
So after about 6 months on this setup, how are things going for you? Anything you would do differently, or lessons learned?
I love my cisco small business kit and you would need to pry it out of my cold dead hands, however, it's embarrassing how far ahead unifi is in their management capability. If I could connect and manage my cisco gears from Unifi, I would be in heaven.
The centralised management is definitely a big benefit of UniFi for many deployments. The newer "Cisco Business" kit can actually be centrally managed using Cisco's "Cisco Business Dashboard" software which is free for up to 25 devices and then licenced for devices beyond that. However, it doesn't seem to have received the best reviews online - It's maybe something I'd try to see how well it works but long term I think I'll just stick to the CLI.
The very slow move to 2.5GB or higher Ethernet ports by switch or router manufactures is very frustrating. Pretty much every consumer WiFi 7 unit has 2.5GB minimum, most also have 10GB.
Why not TP-Link Omada series? Cloud option, self hosted option, web gui, and I believe cli at least the ones I have do.
TP Link don't seem to offer any switches with copper 10G ports, only SFP+. I have CAT6 cabling running through my walls so wanted to be able to use that to carry data up to 10Gb speeds. I also just fancied trying out these switches since they don't seem to get that much coverage online.
@@camerongray1515 TP-Link TL-SX3206HPP 4 10G Poe++ ports and 2 SFP+ ports. personally in my setup i try to use DAC or fiber where possible so i bought the TL-SX3008F with some qsfptek 10g RJ45 copper to sfp+ modules where needed. The TP-Link TL-SG3210XHP-M2 is also a really nice 8 port 2.5G poe+ switch.
@@camerongray1515 not knocking the setup cisco makes great products. just curious. Im hoping to launch a youtube channel with the purchase of my new house.
Interesting, I can't remember if I'd seen that or not when I first bought this, although 4 ports wouldn't have really been enough to handle future expansion. I'm sure they're great switches, but when I'm speccing something out, I have to ultimately pick something - by the same logic I'd need to also justify why I didn't buy switches from literally every other manufacturer - MikroTIk, QNAP, Engenius, DLink.etc all offer affordable 10G switch options. I went for the Cisco ones because they looked like an interesting range, I got some of them for very good prices, and I just fancied trying them out.
Link to fans please? Awesome vid!!
These are the ones I used, bear in mind that they come without connectors so you'd need to crimp them on yourself: www.digikey.co.uk/en/products/detail/sunon-fans/MF40201VX-1000U-G99/7927784
@@camerongray1515 thank you for the quick response:-)
if only it would allow you to use the password wizard to generate a admin password and save that.
It does have an ability to generate a random password, I was just trying to set it to something simple like "testpass123" while setting it up on video with the intention to later reset the switch and set it up properly with a secure password.
Fortinet is unifi on steroids
The worst series from Cisco is CBS series.
I have replaced these switches by some other models or other vendor switches from my client’s data centers due to various issues.🤦🏻♂️
Why not Aruba?
Any models in particular? Their Instant On series aren't CLI manageable so that ruled those out, and their higher end ArubaOS based switches would be completely unaffordable when it comes to getting multi-gig/10GBaseT ports.
@@camerongray1515 yes - Instant On was quite a disappointment, 6100 series are better ones, but still there are no 10g RJ45 version. Planing to test few 6200 series with PoE - will be interesting how loud it will be. Hope we will see more and more 10g, 25g and faster switches from Aruba
Yeah, that's the issue - the higher end "enterprise" product lines tend to move slower and therefore still don't offer multi-gig copper ports on anything outside of their highest end models. It'll probably be a few years before they come down to a price that is remotely viable for a home/small business. I've worked a fair bit with Aruba switches over the years (and later model HP ones that are now running ArubaOS) and they're great - just not really suitable for what I wanted to do here.
Ive seen and used the CBS series switches across the business I help manage... I really dislike them. Every time I had to make any configuration changes etc. it always left a bad taste in my mouth
Out of interest, what sort of issues have you experienced?
@camerongray1515 main ones that come to mind are the Web interface Being unresponsive and requiring a reboot to resolve, the other main one is the switch suddenly deciding that you can no longer access the management interface (Web or ssh) in any way other than the management port.
None of this would be show stopping for you... but a business that would receive an outage? Yeah it's a pain. I much prefer the older sg series switches (as long as the firmware is up to date as older versions didn't support snmp)
WOOO HOOOO. your ditching Unifi CONGRATS !!!!
What's the problem with unifi ?
I'm moving my home network away from UniFI but I'm not necessarily "ditching it" - UniFi will continue to be one of my recommendations for people who want a good, but easy to manage network where they don't necessarily need super advanced features.
Well I’m not changing my unifi equipment so I guess I’ll have to unsubscribe. Will think about it.
I never take a tech guy using a Mac serious.
Tell me you haven't spent much time in professional tech spaces without telling me you haven't spent much time in professional tech spaces - a significant proportion of tech professionals (software engineers.etc) that I know use Macs and many companies now offer staff the choice of which platform they want to use - not because "ooh shiny Apple" but because they want a well supported UNIX OS that also supports popular commercial software (MS Office, Adobe Creative Suite.etc). Also... The laptop I'm using in this video is running Windows 11...