Cisco Catalyst C1300-8FP-2G Management
Normally, we go into the web interfaces since they look better in pictures. We often get folks who ask if the switch has a Cisco-like CLI. We will just stay that indeed, the CLI is Cisco. Instead, turning to the web interface, it was actually tougher to get into than you might think. Cisco has a Day Zero setup guide, but it is missing an important fact: what the default IP address is to get to the interface. To make everyone’s lives easier, it is 192.168.1.254. Once you navigate there, you are greeted with a login.
The default username and password are cisco and cisco.
Just after logging in, you need to set a new password, which is common. You also need to set up a new user, which is less common. Sadly, sthuser and sthuser did not work since it enforces password rules.
Something neat is that instead of going directly to a dashboard, we are brought to a Getting Started page.
Another really nice feature here are the configuration wizards.
For example, if you want to set up VLANs, then you get a nice little wizard to walk you through that. At this point, the Cisco CLI folks will likely be confused about why this is a thing. On the other hand, if you are a small business and have a switch like this just to run a few APs and cameras, you may not have much experience with CLIs. Cisco has gone a long way to make it easy for novice users.
There is a dashboard that has surprisingly little information compared to some others we have seen.
You can see Green Ethernet savings and more on the Health and Power screen.
You can go to the Port Settings which is fairly standard.
Here you can also go into PoE and set power limits and see the overall power used by devices compared to the 120W PoE budget.
Here is the VLAN screen when you are not in the Wizard.
Unlike some cheaper switches, Cisco has a relatively solid STP setup.
There are many ACL options.
You can also set QoS in the management interface.
When you change settings, you often get pop-ups to tell you that something has changed. One important feature is that you need to not just apply a change, but then save the configuration if you want it to persist after a reboot. This is standard on higher-end switches, but this is probably in a segment where other switches simply save immediately, so that is worth pointing out.
Next, let us get to the performance.
