Powering off 2900XL 1

[trini1]

We have 15 Cisco 2900XL switches on campus and I'd to be able to to power them off daily at a specific time, and then power them back on again the next morning.

I've heard that the switches themselves are incapable of doing this, but with a central "control" server it is possible.

I'd be very grateful if someone could provide solution(s)!

Thank you.

 

[BuckWeet]

Umm, why would you do this? and No its not possible.. If you want to block access, then you should look into a layer 3 core switch and do time based access-lists..


BuckWeet

 

[trini1]

I want to do it to prevent students playing network games/surfing the internet/browsing shares/etc. when they ought to be sleeping! It is a large boarding school. Are you sure it's not possible?

 

[adam108]

In my experience with the 2900xl switches, the less power cycling you do, the better. Although they run like the dickens, they are prone to problems at startup. Why not make 2 configs. One which allows access and the other which shuts down all of the ports. This way you can just copy the new run from a tftp server when you want to enable/disable access.

 

[BuckWeet]

yea, they're meant to be powered up and left up. you really need time based access-lists.. You could lookin into private vlans, so the computers can't communication to each other on the local switch, and you should look into a layer 3 switch for your core and do the time based acls on it..



BuckWeet

 

[trini1]

adam108, this would work great. However, can this process be automated - Would the tftp server be able to automatically issue this config to multiple switches at once?
Which tftp server would you recommend for such a task?

(i have little experience here, but give me a starting point and I'll google thenceforth)

Thanks.

 

[BuckWeet]

You'd have to schedule scripts to run for that to work..

basically have it telnet to the switch, then run certain commands..


BuckWeet

 

[adam108]

The free TFTP server from cisco would work fine. Otherwise any tftp server should do the trick for you. I found a telnet scripter which could be used to telnet into the various routers and execute a copy command from a tftp server. The best advice I can give about TFTP servers is to keep them organized. It makes management of the files and especially retrieval less of a headache.