Cisco Catalyst 5505

[etonic]

Hi everybody. I hope there is someone on this forum who can help me.
I received a catalyst 5505 with no software or manuals. I managed to get myself a console cable and was able to reset the "enable" password so I am in full control.
I just don't know much about how to set this thing up.
For now I don't want to do anything fancy like routing because I have 2 Linux machines that do a great job and I can manage them very good.
I just want this thing to act as a layer 2 managed switch so that I can use it as a regular switch. I would later on be interested in monitoring port traffic via SNMP and do some QoS, some bandwidth management...etc.
If anyone can send me a pdf of any info on how to set it up, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you again!

 

[ADB100]

The 5505 is quite an old beast and has been end-of-life for a few years. Depending on the Supervisor version and memory available you can upgrade it to CatOS 6.4(23a). You cannot go beyond this however, and will never be able to. It is only a Layer-2 device (unless you have an RSM installed?) so you won't be able to configure any routing. SNMP can be setup quite easily, however there is no QoS.

Documentation is all on Cisco's website:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/switches/ps686/tsd_products_support_eol_series_home.html

I hope you didn't pay anything for this switch as it really is old.... (

HTH

Andy

 

[etonic]

Andy, thanks for replying so quickly.

I don't want to seem stupid here, but you just lost me... LOL
I had been looking at this cisco link you posted for about a week and most of the stuff just goes over my head. I am not familiar with the Cisco terminology or how things are done.

I would appreciate it if you or anyone else could give me a 1,2,3,4,5..etc steps on how to setup the switch.

Or tell me how do I go about setting up one port and then I'll figure out the rest on my own. (assuming I can do this over the console port)

Thank you all!

 

[ADB100]

If you have reset the switch back to default then you will have a base configuration where all ports are enabled, all should be auto speed & duplex (except Fibre Gigabit ports that are 1000/Full if you have any) and they will all be assigned to VLAN 1. Spanning-tree will be enabled for VLAN 1, however portfast will not be enabled so each port will take at least 45-seconds to initialise.

To make changes to the switch you use the command 'set', if you type question mark (?) it should provide you with a list of possible commands. The 'show' command is also very useful as it will show what is currently configure, again '?' will show you a list of options.

HTH

Andy

 

[vipergg]

If you leave all the ports in vlan 1 , the only things you need to do to manage it is add the following.

1. set int sc0 <ip address> <mask>
2. set ip route default <layer 3 routing interface address> .

this will alow you to telnet to the switch. As to how to do all the other stuff go to cisco.com and search on configuring catalyst 5500 . If you specific other questions write back here.

 

[etonic]

Thank you all again for replying.

I will give these suggestions a shot and see what I come up with and I'll let you know.

I'm sure I'll be back with more questions.

Manny

 

[etonic]

I tried using set int sc0 192.168.1.1 255.255.255.0
Now this becomes the switch's IP address?
Do I have to power cycle the unit for the changes to take affect or if not does it take affect immediately?
Now the other thing is that when I connect a machine to any of the ports (the machine is configured 192.168.1.2/255.255.255.0) the port LEDs lite up (green) for 3 seconds and then the "link" LED comes on (yellow) and nothing else happens. Even if I pool the patch cable out the yellow LED remains on. Is that normal? Am I doing something wrong?

If I could at least get the switch to pass traffic from port 1 to port 2 that would be something. As of right now it seems like the change I made took, but that's it...

Any reply to this is greatly appreciated!

Thanks

 

[vipergg]

The changes are made and saved the moment you input them on a catos box . You need to turn on portfast on all user ports . "set spanning tree portfast mod/port enable . What you are seeing is probably spanning tree running and which will not bring the ports active for like 50 seconds , portfast will within 2-3 seconds bring the ports up. If you pull the patch cable the link lights on the module should go out . Different colors mean different things , don't remember specifically if like solid green is 100 meg and amber is 10 meg , but nothing should be lit if you pull the patch cable.

 

[etonic]

Hi everyone!

Thank you for all the posts. Every single one helped me out a lot. Now, let me tell you what I did and what happened.
It looked like the my Catalyst had been configured with all kinds of VLANs and other extra things which I don't need (at least not right now).
What I ended up doing was reseting the unit back to factory default. Then, I had to re-change the password for the "enable" mode and assign an IP/MASK for it.
All that worked out perfectly. Now I noticed that before when the VLANs were setup every time I plugged in a patch cable the port would lite up amber and staid that way even if I unplugged the cable. That was really odd because I have never seen that before. The thing is that now after reseting it it works like a charm and I get 2 green LEDs to come on on each connected port.
One sort of weird thing is that I even though it passes traffic back and forth, none of the LEDs blink - ever.
Is that normal? Not that it really matters but I would like to know if there is away to turn that on/off or not.

I have one more question for you Cisco experts out there and I promise I won't be bothering you anymore...at least I'll try. )

What is the deal with the MIBs on SNMP and using them to graph stats through MRTG ?
Can I graph stats on specific IP address or just by port?

Thank you again !

Best Regards

Manny

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