Catalyst 1300 Setup

[Orionesque]

Hi, I'm interested in getting a Catalyst 1300 switch. Have a few questions:

1.) Is the console port on these switches truly OOB? The fact that you can set them up via any of the other ports via web interface makes me unsure about this.

2.) If I set up the switch via console, do I need to do anything else to prevent it from ever being configured from the other ports? If someone plugs into any other ethernet port, what happens (After being set up via console)? Does the switch get assigned an IP address? or if there is no DHCP server, can anyone connect via the default IP address of 192.168.1.254?

[Kasun Bandara]

hi @Orionesque ,

1 - yes, console port can consider as one of OOB management method. but you always need physical access to the device to do this unless you have a terminal server to access remotely which have physical console connection to the terminal server.

2 - this depends on how you configure the switch. majority of 1300 switches do not have dedicated management port (not console port). so we can assign default IP to VLAN interface and assign that to the switch port where users can use static IP or DHCP to connect to device using that IP. also we can configure the access list to allow only permitted IPs to access management interface.

but if you only use console port to manage the switch, you can remove all IPs in switch. but this again depends on your setup such, if you have VLANs with routing requirements.

[Mark Elsen]

  - @Orionesque   Installing the and configuring the switch should be 'owned by you' ; better is to not have
                            any unwanted connections on the ports for starters. So when a switch is installed "
                            now one should have access to 192.168.1.254 because user connectivity and connections
                            are not yet provisioned (by you)

  M.