- You know, Cisco just don't care about small-medium businesses. They don't have a range of
products such as router switches and access points for
small-medium businesses. Is that true, or is that false? Well hopefully, this is a big hint. Cisco do have a whole range of products for small-medium businesses. Now before we start, I need to say the following, Cisco are not paying me
to create these videos. I also need to state that
whatever I'm gonna say in this video is my opinion, it's not an official statement from Cisco. I'm thinking of building
an entire home network or small business network on my desk here, showing all these devices, showing you how all of these
devices can be configured. But firstly, you need to know
which devices would you buy and why would you buy them. True or false, you need a license to use Cisco business products? Answer is, that's false. These products don't require a license. You're going to have to
re-mortgage your house or take a loan to be able
to buy Cisco equipment, it's that expensive. Is that true or is that false? Cisco equipment is notoriously
difficult to configure. You have to become a CCNA
or CCNP or even a CCIE to configure Cisco devices. Is that true or is that false? (upbeat music) I wanna create a series of videos where I'll show you how to
configure Cisco routers, Cisco switches, Cisco access points and other devices within a
small business environment. I'll talk about the
differences between devices. As an example, this device,
a Cisco 1000 Series Switch has the full Cisco iOS. These devices, like the 250
switch and the 350 switch, run a different version of iOS. It's not a full Cisco iOS that you would use for the CCNA exam. So if you studying for the CCNA exam, this could be a nice switch to buy. But these switches I wouldn't
buy for the CCNA exam, but they're a great
product for the real world. Now before I continue, please note, Cisco are not paying me for the series of videos. They did, however, send me some switches. They sent me this 250 switch and this 350 switch last year and I didn't get the
chance to create the series so I'm really happy that
they've now shipped me additional devices so that
I can create a full series discussing their products. I personally purchased this switch, I personally purchased some
of the access points myself because I wanted to create this series, but Cisco have kindly given
me additional devices. But I'm gonna keep the content
in the series very technical. I'm gonna look at the good
and bad of these products and try and give you my
opinion of the products. But let me tell you that I
ran one of the older versions of these products in my
home network for many years. This is a Cisco SG 300 Series Switch. I bought this switch because number one, it was much cheaper than some
of the other devices out there at the time when I needed it. I wanted to have one gig
interfaces in my network, I wanted to have a managed Cisco switch so I ran my home network
using two of these devices for quite a long time. But today, those switches
have been replaced with a range of switches. So as an example, on the Cisco website, they talk about the
on-premise network switches versus cloud-managed switches. Unlike solutions from other vendors, Cisco give you two options. These devices are managed locally. You can manage them using
an app on your phone, you can manage them using
some additional software which I'll demonstrate in this series, but these are not cloud-managed devices, unlike the Meraki devices. So you can use these devices or you could use Meraki
switches if you want to. I wanna also address some of the myths and misconceptions about Cisco products. One of them, let's start off right now, do you need licenses
to use these products? And the answer is no. Now some people have cynically said, wow, you can actually use a
Cisco switch without a license? Yes you can. You can use the Cisco 1000 Series Switch or these switches without licenses. You do not need licenses
to operate these products. Now these are aimed at
small-medium businesses. Cisco do have a product which allows you to manage these devices. If you do use the Cisco business dashboard as a MSP as an example,
they will require licensing after 25 devices. But you can manage up to 25 devices with the Cisco dashboard
without any licenses. You can configure these
devices through the CLI with no licensing, so you don't have to load a
licensing on these devices. You can configure the devices
through different means, through an mobile app as an example, I'd like to demonstrate that
in this series of videos because a lot of people
believe that the only way to configure a lot of Cisco devices is through a console connection. You can configure the
devices through a console and I'll demonstrate how to do that, but you can configure the
devices using a mobile phone app. At the time of this recording, the new mobile phone
app hasn't been released so I'm not gonna
demonstrate that right now, I'm gonna wait for the
new mobile phone app to be available so that I can show you how to configure these devices
using the mobile phone app. You can now configure these devices through a very easy web interface. So rather than using the CLI, you can use a web interface
to configure them. As mentioned, these two
devices do not use Cisco iOS, so the full-blown classic Cisco iOS that you would come across if you were studying for your CCNA exam, they use a Cisco Lite iOS if you like. So I wouldn't recommend
buying these devices for your CCNA exam, perhaps as mentioned, you'd
get a 1000 Series Switch. So again, just for disclosure, I'm not being paid to create these videos, but Cisco did ship me some of the devices and let's start with a story on that. They shipped me these
two switches last year, but this year, when they tried to ship me additional devices, I'm working with a team in India, with the current situation, there was a lot of problems
trying to get me the devices. So in the end, where do you think they bought these access points? Where did they buy this
router as an example? They bought it from amazon.co.uk. So Cisco, rather than trying to ship me a device from overseas, simply went onto amazon.co.uk and then purchased the devices and shipped them locally to me. So you can buy these devices on Amazon and I wanna talk about pricing in a moment because these devices are
actually very affordable. They are geared towards
the small-medium business. Okay, so let's put Cisco to the test. On their website, and I'll put a link to this page below this video, they have various small
business networking solutions, as an example, switches. So let's open up a tab
and look at switches. They tell us that the 110
Series Unmanaged Switches starts at $60. That's this little switch. Now an unmanaged switch doesn't
allow you to configure it. In other words, you can't
configure IP addresses or VLANs, stuff like that, through an unmanaged switch like this. In some cases you don't need that, you just need a switch to
give you IP connectivity. I often use a switch like this on my desk. If I just wanna have a little
network running on my desk and I don't need to configure it, all I need is some kind
of IP connectivity. You may use this in a small
business as an example, just on a retail floor or in
some place where you don't need to configure the switches, you just need basic IP connectivity. But on Cisco's website, they say that this switch costs $60. Let's check that actually on amazon.com. So on amazon.com, Cisco's
store on amazon.com, they have a section where
I can learn about switches and here they have the
Cisco Business CBS 110 5T-D Unmanaged Switch, the 5 Port Gigabit Ethernet, $60. So they passed the test in that case. Now you may say that's too
expensive for a unmanaged switch, I'll just buy another vendor, but let's have a look at
some of the other products. So Cisco Business 220 starts at $150. The 250 series switch starts at 235, the 350 switch starts at 270 and then the 1000 is more expensive. So looking at the 250 series switches, here's one for $192, $236 here, $256 here. As we scroll down, let's go to
the more expensive switches. Here's an example of a
350 series switch, $226, here's one for $352. So the prices on Amazon are actually lower than on Cisco's website. Now I'm gonna show you firstly, how to connect to these
switches using a USB cable such as this. So I've got two USB cables. Here I'm gonna connect
to the 1000 series switch and one to the 250 series switch. In this example, both
of these are powered on, but these are fanless switches, so absolutely no noise at the moment. I'll turn the 350 on later, that makes quite a bit of noise, but the interface is very similar to the 250 series switch. So first thing I need
to do is just plug in the console cable. So I'll plug the first one
into the 1000 series switch, plug the second one into
the 250 series switch. So I've basically got two
serial cables connected to the two switches. So you can see one is
connected to the one switch, one is connected to the other switch. So that's all I've done. So now that I've done that, I need to download PuTTY to be able to configure the devices. So on my Windows computer,
the one running here, I'm gonna download PuTTY. So search for that in Google,
click Download It Now. I'm gonna simply download
the PuTTY executable for Windows 64 bit and click Save. I'll show that in folder. Double click on the executable, click Run. And now I need to connect
to the serial comport to work out which one it is. Right click on Start menu,
go to Device Manager, have a look at my comports. I've got two COM5 and COM7. So in PuTTY, I'll make
a connection to COM5. Press Enter and I'm asked for my username. Now these switches have been
reset to factory defaults. I know that this is the 250 series switch because by default it will
ask you for a username. Default username is Cisco, default password is Cisco and now you're asked to change
your username and password. So I'll set it to David and
I'll set a decent password. And as you can see, the username and password has been
successfully changed. If you used a Cisco CLI, you'll notice that this is different. It's very similar, so the
show Run command works, but the output is different. Show IP interface brief doesn't work and something that you'll
probably find frustrating, is the back key doesn't
work by default in PuTTY. So in PuTTY, I'm gonna change my settings and under keyboard,
I'm gonna set Backspace as Control H rather than the default of Control ? and click Apply and now my back key works. So show IP interface
brief, that doesn't work. Show interfaces status
will show me my interfaces on the switch. So you can see they are 28 interfaces, show version as an example, shows me that this is a CBS 250 switch and I'll have two versions of software. The active image is version 3.1, inactive version is 3.0. So this has a Cisco-ish feel to it, it's not exactly the same commands as you get on a full-blown
Cisco iOS switch. If I open up another session here and set this to COM7, because that's the other comport that was recognized by Windows and click Open, notice I'm connected to
a device called Switch. Show version shows me that
this is the 1000 series switch. The 1000 series switch has full Cisco iOS, classic Cisco iOS. So you can see the version here is 15.2. Type enable, default
password is Cisco, show run and you'll see that this configuration is what you're used to
if you're used to working on a Cisco device. The 250 switch doesn't have the full Cisco classic iOS once again. Show IP interface, press Enter, shows me the default IP
address of the switch. Now you need to decide how you
wanna configure the device. If you're used to Cisco commands, you may wanna use the CLI, but you will find that
there are differences. So as an example, if you
wanna delete the configuration or erase the startup configuration, the command on the 250 switch
is delete startup config, whereas on a Cisco classic iOS switch, you would type erase startup config. So there are differences. You may prefer just using
the gooey interface. So on my Mac, I'm gonna turn
off my Wi-Fi connection, I'm gonna go to network preferences and I'm gonna configure
this ethernet adapter. This adapter, I'll plug
into the 250 series switch and what I'll do is manually
give it an IP address with a subnet mask and click Apply. The reason I have to
turn off my Wi-Fi network is my Wi-Fi network is
using the same subject. So I wanna manually configure the device so that I can connect to the Cisco switch. And here, I'm gonna put in
my username and password. By default, it's Cisco,
Cisco but I've changed it, so I'm gonna log in with my
username, David and my password. And we presented with a
getting started interface, so we can configure the
device through that interface. Dashboard shows me a
whole bunch of information about the device. They have configuration wizards
that you can go through. You can configure a lot of
stuff through this interface. And this is the 250 switch. The 350 switch supports
stacking, does a lot more. But I wanna show you that Cisco does have a gooey interface that you can use to configure the device if you're not used to Cisco CLI commands. So under VLAN management, we can configure VLANs
under Port Management, we can configure settings of the ports. As an example, I'll select
this port, click Edit and then I can change
settings of gigabit 1 or other interfaces. You can specify the speeds and a whole bunch of other options. Now in this first video, I just wanted to show you how
to connect to the switches, show you a little bit about the interface. In subsequent videos, I'm gonna get into a lot
more technical content. Let me know what you wanna see, let me know what types of
configurations you'd like to see with these devices. I once again wanna build
an entire SMB network, if you like, on my desk
here with access points, with clients, with servers and show you how to configure that, but I think that's enough
for this first video. Please put your comments below, let me know what you'd like to see. I'm David Bombal and I
wish you all the very best. (upbeat music)
