Correct way to connect a 2900 with a 2950

first off, you need to use a crossover cable (hence the orange light you got), so your good there.

second, check the speed of the hub. If its 10mb, you will have a problem using an uplink port. I haven't used a 2950 with an Ax and Bx port, only 1900's, but I do know they are locked at 100mb and I assume the 2950 is the same.

As a suggestion, I would plug the 2950 into another switch in the rack (1900 or another 2900) on a 100mb port so you can keep the backbone

100mb. Take the hub and hang it off > I'm adding a 2950 to a rack with mostly 2900 and 1900's. I need to

Here are a couple of ideas...

Yes, a X-over is needed, however please note that the 1900 A/B ports are fixed at 100Mb and default to Full Duplex. They don't do 10Mb (or Gig). The A/B ports on the 2950 can do 10/100/1GB and Half/Full (except Gig which is only Full), so you may need to lock those ports to match the 1900. I can't remember if the 1900 does Autonegotiate on these ports, probably not, so locking all ports is probably best.... If Autonegotiate fails it defaults to 10Mb Half Duplex, which is why the light stays orange, the 1900 only does 100Mb...

I also take your reference to "HUB" above to mean Switch and not a true HUB. If its a true hub then remember that a Hub is always Half Duplex, unless it is a "Switched Hub" when all bets are off..........;-)

The 1900 non A/B ports are fixed at 10/Half, which is the default for the 2950 autonegotiate that does not get a negotiate response, so you probably got lucky with that connection.........;-)

Yes, it means the Autonegotiate on the 2950 failed to complete and there is a link mismatch with the result. Locking both ends to the same setting (100/Full) should allow it to work fine...

On a 2950 gig port use - duplex full speed 100 to remove autonegotiate.

Good luck...............pk.

Yeah, switch not hub. I know the difference, but the datacom guy calls everything a hub so I got used to using that term around him.

I've since returned to the closet and found some other things. Actually all of our 2900's are 24 port and have no Ax/Bx ports. The

1900's are 24 port and have 100Mbit Ax/Bx ports. So the connections from the 1900's to 2900's are done from Bx on the 1900 to a numbered port on the 2900. I suspect I should reverse this on the 2950. I should probably go from a numbered port on the 2900 to the Ax port on the 2950. (Initially I was going Bx on the 1900 to Ax on the 2950, which may have been the problem since no one has changed any of the factory settings on the new switch.)

Of course the question is why have they not been configured? Well we don't have any people in this office that do that sort of thing. I might try my hand at it. I'll just load up Ethereal and leave a sniff running for a while and filter out everything but the cisco to cisco traffic and hopefully I'll see the MAC of the switch and then can figure out what IP it grabbed off of dhcp.

Greetings,

Sounds typical, I just like to make sure didn't miss anything........;-)

That shouldn't be a problem, the 2900's can do 100/Full on those ports so that can match the 1900's A/B ports.

I don't see why that is necessary, the A/B ports both operate exactly the same, and are compatible with any of the 24 ports on the 2900. Its just a case of ensuring the Speeds and Duplex's match for each connection to a 1900...

For the 2900's, think of Gig ports (equivalent to A/B) as identical to the 24 standard ports, except they can do 1GB as well. On the 2900's ALL ports can do trunking etc, but on the 1900's only the A/B pors can do that.

Good luck.............pk.