Thursday, January 20, 2011

Cisco SLM2008 web managed and STP capable switch review

So I've finally got a solution for my conference room switches. Every once in a while a bonehead user will plug both ends of a cable into the switch and take out a section of the network (STP convergence times heading toward infinity tend to have a detrimental effect on uptime). The larger switches all have Spanning Tree Protocol set up on them so they weren't really affected but I didn't have a cost effective solution for the smaller rooms that needed switches; and preferably the type that don't howl or cost a fortune. Enter in the Cisco Small business smart switch series:
SLM2008 - http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps9996/index.html
They're compact, web-managed, support STP, VLANs, and the 8 port gigabit model only costs $100.

So after having set it up I had to test the bonehead maneuver! As much as the effort went against my better instincts, I took a cable and plugged it into ports 1 and 4. As you can see below, the switch detected the loop and blocked the ports out, thus preventing a cascade of pain to the nearest network closet.



And that's just one less vulnerable flank on my network...

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