Connecting a switch to the PC port on a IP230 phone

[appelq]

I have Cisco switches with POE.
2 VLans (The phones are on VLAN2 (10.10.x.x.) VLAN1 is for the PCs, etc. (192.168.x.x)
I plug the ShoreTel 230 Phone set into the Wall Jack and a PC into the PC Port and it all works fine.

However I have 4 workstations that have small 4-port netgear switches, to which they connect the PC and a Network Printer.
So we plug the Phone set into the wall jack (so it can get the POE) and the small switch into the PC Port on the phone.

In this case, the Phone set will not get a DHCP IP Address, and nothing on the VLAN1 network can see the devices pluges into the small switch.

Any ideas?

Thanks in Advance,
Chuck

 

[tampasteve1]

What happens if you plug the phone in, wait for it to come up and get the DHCP address and start working, and THEN plug in the 4 port switch?

 

[appelq]

I tried that.
The Phone plugged in by itself and it got it's DHCP IP address and settled down fine.
I then plugged in the Small Switch (that has the PC and the Network Printer plugged into it).
The PC got a connection and I could access the Internet and anything on the VLAN1 network like normal.

However, the Network Printer could be Pinged from another PC, nor could any other PC's on the network Print to it.
So I put everything back, by unplugging the Phone and plugging the switch directly into the wall jack and the PC and Printer are behaving normally.

The Network Printer has a Static IP Address, and is managed from the Print Server on our network.

Chuck

 

[mikeyb123]

Sounds like the netgears aren't carrying the vlan tagging information. We use hp1810-8g for our small switches where we don't have enough ports available. wall jack plugged into port 1 of the HP 1810 - this provides the power to the switch then phones and pc's run from that. Only downside is you need a powerbrick for the phone.

It's not getting any smarter out there. You have to come to terms with stupidity, and make it work for you.

 

[appelq]

Solved.

Turns out the Cisco Switches had "Port Security" enabled and was limiting the number of MAC addresses per port to 2

We raised the max number of MAC Addresses and that solved our problem.

Thanks,
Chuck