- You know, Cisco just don't care
about small-medium businesses.
They don't have a range of products such as router switches
and access points for small-medium businesses.
Is that true, or is that false?
Well hopefully, this is a big hint.
Cisco do have a whole range of products
for small-medium businesses.
Now before we start,
I need to say the following,
Cisco are not paying me to create these videos.
I also need to state that whatever I'm gonna say
in this video is my opinion,
it's not an official statement from Cisco.
I'm thinking of building an entire home network
or small business network on my desk here,
showing all these devices,
showing you how all of these devices can be configured.
But firstly, you need to know which devices would you buy
and why would you buy them.
True or false, you need a license
to use Cisco business products?
Answer is, that's false.
These products don't require a license.
You're going to have to re-mortgage your house
or take a loan to be able to buy Cisco equipment,
it's that expensive.
Is that true or is that false?
Cisco equipment is notoriously difficult to configure.
You have to become a CCNA or CCNP or even a CCIE
to configure Cisco devices.
Is that true or is that false?
(upbeat music)
I wanna create a series of videos
where I'll show you how to configure Cisco routers,
Cisco switches, Cisco access points
and other devices within a small business environment.
I'll talk about the differences between devices.
As an example, this device, a Cisco 1000 Series Switch
has the full Cisco iOS.
These devices, like the 250 switch and the 350 switch,
run a different version of iOS.
It's not a full Cisco iOS
that you would use for the CCNA exam.
So if you studying for the CCNA exam,
this could be a nice switch to buy.
But these switches I wouldn't buy for the CCNA exam,
but they're a great product for the real world.
Now before I continue,
please note, Cisco are not paying me
for the series of videos.
They did, however, send me some switches.
They sent me this 250 switch
and this 350 switch last year
and I didn't get the chance to create the series
so I'm really happy that they've now shipped me
additional devices so that I can create a full series
discussing their products.
I personally purchased this switch,
I personally purchased some of the access points myself
because I wanted to create this series,
but Cisco have kindly given me additional devices.
But I'm gonna keep the content in the series very technical.
I'm gonna look at the good and bad of these products
and try and give you my opinion of the products.
But let me tell you that I ran one of the older versions
of these products in my home network for many years.
This is a Cisco SG 300 Series Switch.
I bought this switch because number one,
it was much cheaper than some of the other devices out there
at the time when I needed it.
I wanted to have one gig interfaces in my network,
I wanted to have a managed Cisco switch
so I ran my home network using two of these devices
for quite a long time.
But today, those switches have been replaced
with a range of switches.
So as an example, on the Cisco website,
they talk about the on-premise network switches
versus cloud-managed switches.
Unlike solutions from other vendors,
Cisco give you two options.
These devices are managed locally.
You can manage them using an app on your phone,
you can manage them using some additional software
which I'll demonstrate in this series,
but these are not cloud-managed devices,
unlike the Meraki devices.
So you can use these devices
or you could use Meraki switches if you want to.
I wanna also address some of the myths
and misconceptions about Cisco products.
One of them, let's start off right now,
do you need licenses to use these products?
And the answer is no.
Now some people have cynically said,
wow, you can actually use a Cisco switch without a license?
Yes you can.
You can use the Cisco 1000 Series Switch
or these switches without licenses.
You do not need licenses to operate these products.
Now these are aimed at small-medium businesses.
Cisco do have a product which allows you
to manage these devices.
If you do use the Cisco business dashboard
as a MSP as an example, they will require licensing
after 25 devices.
But you can manage up to 25 devices
with the Cisco dashboard without any licenses.
You can configure these devices through the CLI
with no licensing,
so you don't have to load a licensing on these devices.
You can configure the devices through different means,
through an mobile app as an example,
I'd like to demonstrate that in this series of videos
because a lot of people believe that the only way
to configure a lot of Cisco devices
is through a console connection.
You can configure the devices through a console
and I'll demonstrate how to do that,
but you can configure the devices using a mobile phone app.
At the time of this recording,
the new mobile phone app hasn't been released
so I'm not gonna demonstrate that right now,
I'm gonna wait for the new mobile phone app
to be available so that I can show you
how to configure these devices using the mobile phone app.
You can now configure these devices
through a very easy web interface.
So rather than using the CLI,
you can use a web interface to configure them.
As mentioned, these two devices do not use Cisco iOS,
so the full-blown classic Cisco iOS
that you would come across
if you were studying for your CCNA exam,
they use a Cisco Lite iOS if you like.
So I wouldn't recommend buying these devices
for your CCNA exam,
perhaps as mentioned, you'd get a 1000 Series Switch.
So again, just for disclosure,
I'm not being paid to create these videos,
but Cisco did ship me some of the devices
and let's start with a story on that.
They shipped me these two switches last year,
but this year, when they tried
to ship me additional devices,
I'm working with a team in India,
with the current situation,
there was a lot of problems trying to get me the devices.
So in the end, where do you think
they bought these access points?
Where did they buy this router as an example?
They bought it from amazon.co.uk.
So Cisco, rather than trying to ship me
a device from overseas,
simply went onto amazon.co.uk
and then purchased the devices
and shipped them locally to me.
So you can buy these devices on Amazon
and I wanna talk about pricing in a moment
because these devices are actually very affordable.
They are geared towards the small-medium business.
Okay, so let's put Cisco to the test.
On their website, and I'll put a link
to this page below this video,
they have various small business networking solutions,
as an example, switches.
So let's open up a tab and look at switches.
They tell us that the 110 Series Unmanaged Switches
starts at $60.
That's this little switch.
Now an unmanaged switch doesn't allow you to configure it.
In other words, you can't configure IP addresses
or VLANs, stuff like that,
through an unmanaged switch like this.
In some cases you don't need that,
you just need a switch to give you IP connectivity.
I often use a switch like this on my desk.
If I just wanna have a little network running on my desk
and I don't need to configure it,
all I need is some kind of IP connectivity.
You may use this in a small business as an example,
just on a retail floor or in some place where you don't need
to configure the switches,
you just need basic IP connectivity.
But on Cisco's website,
they say that this switch costs $60.
Let's check that actually on amazon.com.
So on amazon.com, Cisco's store on amazon.com,
they have a section where I can learn about switches
and here they have the Cisco Business CBS 110
5T-D Unmanaged Switch,
the 5 Port Gigabit Ethernet, $60.
So they passed the test in that case.
Now you may say that's too expensive for a unmanaged switch,
I'll just buy another vendor,
but let's have a look at some of the other products.
So Cisco Business 220 starts at $150.
The 250 series switch starts at 235,
the 350 switch starts at 270
and then the 1000 is more expensive.
So looking at the 250 series switches,
here's one for $192, $236 here, $256 here.
As we scroll down, let's go to the more expensive switches.
Here's an example of a 350 series switch, $226,
here's one for $352.
So the prices on Amazon are actually lower
than on Cisco's website.
Now I'm gonna show you firstly,
how to connect to these switches using a USB cable
such as this.
So I've got two USB cables.
Here I'm gonna connect to the 1000 series switch
and one to the 250 series switch.
In this example, both of these are powered on,
but these are fanless switches,
so absolutely no noise at the moment.
I'll turn the 350 on later,
that makes quite a bit of noise,
but the interface is very similar
to the 250 series switch.
So first thing I need to do is just plug in
the console cable.
So I'll plug the first one into the 1000 series switch,
plug the second one into the 250 series switch.
So I've basically got two serial cables connected
to the two switches.
So you can see one is connected to the one switch,
one is connected to the other switch.
So that's all I've done.
So now that I've done that,
I need to download PuTTY to be able
to configure the devices.
So on my Windows computer, the one running here,
I'm gonna download PuTTY.
So search for that in Google, click Download It Now.
I'm gonna simply download the PuTTY executable
for Windows 64 bit and click Save.
I'll show that in folder.
Double click on the executable, click Run.
And now I need to connect to the serial comport
to work out which one it is.
Right click on Start menu, go to Device Manager,
have a look at my comports.
I've got two COM5 and COM7.
So in PuTTY, I'll make a connection to COM5.
Press Enter and I'm asked for my username.
Now these switches have been reset to factory defaults.
I know that this is the 250 series switch
because by default it will ask you for a username.
Default username is Cisco,
default password is Cisco
and now you're asked to change your username and password.
So I'll set it to David and I'll set a decent password.
And as you can see, the username
and password has been successfully changed.
If you used a Cisco CLI,
you'll notice that this is different.
It's very similar, so the show Run command works,
but the output is different.
Show IP interface brief doesn't work
and something that you'll probably find frustrating,
is the back key doesn't work by default in PuTTY.
So in PuTTY, I'm gonna change my settings
and under keyboard, I'm gonna set Backspace
as Control H rather than the default
of Control ? and click Apply
and now my back key works.
So show IP interface brief, that doesn't work.
Show interfaces status will show me my interfaces
on the switch.
So you can see they are 28 interfaces,
show version as an example,
shows me that this is a CBS 250 switch
and I'll have two versions of software.
The active image is version 3.1,
inactive version is 3.0.
So this has a Cisco-ish feel to it,
it's not exactly the same commands
as you get on a full-blown Cisco iOS switch.
If I open up another session here
and set this to COM7,
because that's the other comport
that was recognized by Windows
and click Open,
notice I'm connected to a device called Switch.
Show version shows me that this is the 1000 series switch.
The 1000 series switch has full Cisco iOS,
classic Cisco iOS.
So you can see the version here is 15.2.
Type enable, default password is Cisco, show run
and you'll see that this configuration
is what you're used to if you're used to working
on a Cisco device.
The 250 switch doesn't have
the full Cisco classic iOS once again.
Show IP interface, press Enter,
shows me the default IP address of the switch.
Now you need to decide how you wanna configure the device.
If you're used to Cisco commands,
you may wanna use the CLI,
but you will find that there are differences.
So as an example, if you wanna delete the configuration
or erase the startup configuration,
the command on the 250 switch is delete startup config,
whereas on a Cisco classic iOS switch,
you would type erase startup config.
So there are differences.
You may prefer just using the gooey interface.
So on my Mac, I'm gonna turn off my Wi-Fi connection,
I'm gonna go to network preferences
and I'm gonna configure this ethernet adapter.
This adapter, I'll plug into the 250 series switch
and what I'll do is manually give it an IP address
with a subnet mask and click Apply.
The reason I have to turn off my Wi-Fi network
is my Wi-Fi network is using the same subject.
So I wanna manually configure the device
so that I can connect to the Cisco switch.
And here, I'm gonna put in my username and password.
By default, it's Cisco, Cisco but I've changed it,
so I'm gonna log in with my username, David and my password.
And we presented with a getting started interface,
so we can configure the device through that interface.
Dashboard shows me a whole bunch of information
about the device.
They have configuration wizards that you can go through.
You can configure a lot of stuff through this interface.
And this is the 250 switch.
The 350 switch supports stacking, does a lot more.
But I wanna show you that Cisco
does have a gooey interface
that you can use to configure the device
if you're not used to Cisco CLI commands.
So under VLAN management,
we can configure VLANs under Port Management,
we can configure settings of the ports.
As an example, I'll select this port, click Edit
and then I can change settings of gigabit 1
or other interfaces.
You can specify the speeds
and a whole bunch of other options.
Now in this first video,
I just wanted to show you how to connect to the switches,
show you a little bit about the interface.
In subsequent videos,
I'm gonna get into a lot more technical content.
Let me know what you wanna see,
let me know what types of configurations you'd like to see
with these devices.
I once again wanna build an entire SMB network,
if you like, on my desk here with access points,
with clients, with servers
and show you how to configure that,
but I think that's enough for this first video.
Please put your comments below,
let me know what you'd like to see.
I'm David Bombal and I wish you all the very best.
(upbeat music)