Configuring Console Connection Software In Windows! Ep.7: Real-World Business Switch Network Build

configuring console connection software in windows by time we're done here you will be able to configure a console port connection from a windows computer all right well before we get configuring these switches with what i call a base configuration i want to first show you how to set up a console connection meaning more of the software side of things on a windows-based device and i'm thinking after this i'm going to create a nugget on how to do it on an apple device because i know there's a lot of os x lovers out there so first off we've got the hardware in place and i'm going to be demoing this on a cisco sg300 10 port switch i've got my usb to serial adapter this one from cable matters and then i've got my console cable which is a db9 female to db9 female which will connect one side to this male usb to serial adapter and the other side will plug in to the back of that sg 300 10 port switch and we talked about the hardware in the last nugget so what software do you need well first off if you haven't plugged it in before you're going to need the driver for this usb to serial adapter so let's let's uh find i'm going to plug it into windows now this is windows 10 first time connecting this and a lot of times windows will have built-in drivers for it if not you got to go to the manufacturer website or bust out the cd-rom if you even have such a thing and get the driver from there as you can see it's installing the device right now and look at that it says i'm installing it's recognized a prolific usb to serial com port and you see that com13 now that com13 is going to be essential because when we use the software program which is actually going to be putty and i'll show you how to find that in just a moment you're going to need to know that com number now if you missed it you went to grab a cup of coffee while it was doing that you can always open device manager and i'll go down from network adapters right there is our ports common lpt and right there is com13 prolific usb to cereal so i can always find it right there okay so usb to serial is good now i'm going to take this guy let's go in and uh and velcro him get him connected from my laptop to the back of that sg300 good and good we are connected now as you can see nothing magical happened nothing popped up on the screen i have to download what's known as a terminal program so i'm going to just open microsoft edge there and i'm going to search for putty now putty's not the only one out there there are others like terra term like hyper term if you're going really old school but putty is great because it's an open source project it's always being kept up to date so there's always it's you know it's always stable and it's just so simple you can see that you can you can even download the installer but i just go straight for the executable you i mean you don't you can just copy that file to your desktop and use it straight from there so that's that's how simple it is so i'm going to hit save on that guy let it download and we're good so i'm going to click on run opens the program right there and you can see it's saying okay what kind of connection do you want to raw telnet r login ssh and we are going to go for serial now this is where you need to know that com number so i've got com1 i'm going to type in com 13 because that's what device manager showed me and then i've got the speed over here now this speed is actually really critical because mini switches just simply won't work if you have the wrong speed now 9600 baud or bits per second is the most common speed that's that's going to be typed in and that's the most common thing that network devices use especially uh cisco enterprise stuff but best thing to do is to always go to google and type in for instance sg300 300-10 serial settings or com port settings or something like that so right there console settings actually hey i'll go with the quick start guide because that's usually a little more reputable than some forum there we go i'll hit control f on the keyboard and search for let's do serial uh serial cable okay okay right there perfect so using the comm support so connected to the serial cable use hyper terminal so they are whoa uh they are old school there i think i just zoomed way in uh configure the utility with the following parameters 15 200 bits per second uh so that is great and oh look at this it says with the release 1.255 autobot detection is enabled by default which is actually really nice so this switch you can use any speed and it'll auto detect what you have a lot of switches don't do that i'm going to go with what they said 15 200 and hit open now when the screen comes up it's black and don't fear you want to hit the enter key a couple times on the keyboard and usually something happens but it's not happening well that's not cool let's try a little trouble first off is this is this switch even on yeah switches on i see a blinking light there now when the system light is blinking rapid like that at least on this model of switch means there is no configuration um i'm gonna try a different baud rate just to see if that works oh i lost my putty putty.exe double-click that guy and let's try it again we'll go serial connection com13 and let's just try 9600 baud oh look at that documentation was a liar uh so yeah it looks like it it this one had to be 9600 so i'll hit enter key retry authentication okay so the good news is that we're in and even the cisco quick start guide was totally off well let me summarize that process because i know some of you are going what just happened there so first off we got the usb to serial adapter and the console cable and connected it to our laptop and switch so we physically connected the whole chain of events right everybody's good with that now when we did that windows automatically installed the driver for that usb to serial adapter and called it com13 so i'm already down to step three right and that all happened automatically now if your windows operating system doesn't have the driver for your usb to serial adapter you'll need to download that and install that but the end result is the same you end up with a new com port on your windows operating system then you go download a terminal program now i really pushed you towards putty but there are others out there like tera term i actually used teraterm before i knew putty existed and then there's hyperterm if those of you like the old windows throwback the guy who wrote hyperterm actually doesn't belong to microsoft microsoft just licensed it from him he created hyper terminal private edition which still isn't as good as putty so use funny and then from there we open a serial connection we type in use that new com port that we created mine was com13 yours will probably be something else and then select what speed and i think that's probably where most of the confusion came in first off we saw the cisco documentation that said oh well our cisco sg300 used this and that didn't work so i just pulled 9600 out of the top of my head now i know that because i've done this for a long time there are four common speeds actually three common speeds this one this one and this one actually this one's here just because i didn't like having an uneven column where i had two on one and one on the other i'm kind of joking but kind of serious but if you go to uh google and type in serial port speeds you'll actually see there's a lot of other speeds out there and this takes me back to my old commodore amiga running a bbs at 1200 baud these are all the different speeds that are out there so you can try those and just cycle between them to see if you find one that works but almost always it's going to be one of those four so try those first now i promised at the beginning of this nugget that you will be able to configure a console port connection from a windows computer so now i want you to do it the practical exercise is simply to access the console port interface of one of the switches that you've purchased now i'm saying one but i really want you to do them all get that command line interface up there to where you have administrative access and get this switch to the point where you can manage it from the console port as a bonus i've said ensure that you document the settings that you need for the switch once i figure out the console port settings a lot of times what i'll do is i'll take a white sticker and put it on the back of the switch i'll write console speed and then the baud rate that i used and i'll jot down the default administrative username and password in this case it was cisco cisco i don't do that for all switches but if it's a brand name that i'm not super familiar with i'll put that sticker on there to save me time in the future and this is why i love teaching the it expert series here at cbt nuggets because in the real world console ports don't always work when you plug them in sometimes you just have to try different settings different speeds until you find something that does work well next up console connections from apple devices i hope this has been informative for you and i'd like to thank you for viewing you

Channel: Viatto

Views: 3,495

Keywords: Ubiquiti Switch, Cisco Switch, network install, network switch, Jeremy Cioara, Business switch network, real world install, switch install, patch panel install, real world, installation, Real world install, cable management, fiber cabling, Fiber Cable, CCNA, fiber, fiber types, information technology (industry), information technology, it, tech, networking, it jobs, it fundamentals, how to, learn IT, networking tutorial for beginners, home network, Keeping IT Simple

Id: Pmb5LoKa_fc

Length: 9min 10sec (550 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 04 2020