upgraded my switch, but went too far up.....

[patrick sullivan]

Hello

I recently purchased a layer 3 switch for my home network. I now realize that I don't have any need for such a beast (Cisco SG500-28 28-Port-used for good price on ebay), but now that I have it, I will use it to educate myself over time. I do have one question. The main reason I upgraded was because I want a way to monitor/diagnose my network. I want to see if packets are being sent correctly, speed, etc. I have limited knowledge, but have successfully set up a home network with a NAS, UTM, several PC's, etc. I am not having any problems presently, but I did do all the wiring myself, so it would be nice to set up this switch to let me know if I screwed up along the way. What feature (if any) would I research on this particular switch so I can set it up to monitor the functionality of my network?

Cheers

 

[sfx2000]

port mirroring can be kind of fun...

SNMP on the switch can give lots of great statistics to a hosted app like Cacti and the like...

 

[patrick sullivan]

Thanks sfx2000, I will research SNMP. Looks like Cacti is the best NMS choice for me since I use windows. I fear that the SNMP configuration will be way over my head, but I'll give it a go.

 

[MichaelCG]

Cacti isn't tied to windows....historically...this may be quite dated....PRTG was the easy peasy Windows SNMP tool. I have been running Cacti for years...but on a Linux box.

 

[patrick sullivan]

Excellent. Thanks guys. I have PRTG up and running (free home license). Lots of information offered up. I will now try to configure SNMP on the Cisco switch. My NMS will be PRTG and Cacti if I understand this all correctly. Looks like I should update my switch to use SNMP v3 before I start. Any further advise would be appreciated.

Thanks

 

[coxhaus]

If you want to run a VLAN or guest VLAN I have a configuration for the SG300-28 layer 3 switch which should be very close for your switch. Look through my threads. A layer 3 switch is a very fast setup but it is complicated. Just go slow. I use a white board to plan out the network.