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Suggestions on getting managed layer 3 switches working

I have posted the following message on the Netgear support forum. Haven't heard anything yet and I'm posting it here hoping that someone out here on Usenet will have a suggestion or two.

*-=[ begin quoted text ]=-*

I'm helping my kid's school upgrade their network. The existing network consisted of a bunch of 10/100 hubs connected together. Internet access is from a Cable modem.

We replaced the hubs with 1 FSM7352S and 3 FSM7328S's. I originally had the 7352 and two of the 7328's connected together via the stacking ports. [Note to Usenet readers, these are Netgear switches]

Local network access (inside the school) is OK. All PC's can see the server but nobody can get out onto the Internet.

The 7352 is the master swith and is the Management Unit. One of the

7328's is co-located with the 7352. Another 7328 is in another part of the building but is connected via the stacking ports and is part of the stack. This 7328 has the cable modem connected to port 24 of the switch. The last 7328 is not part of the stack and is just hanging off a regular 10/100 port of the 7352.

Internet access worked find with the old hubs. After replacing the hubs with the switches, Internet access stopped.

The only change from the default switch configs are that I have disabled DHCP and gave the switches static IP addresses (as outlined in the hardware manual).

I have tried all kinds of things. I've reset the switches several times. Cleared the configs and started over several times. Even reset the cable modem.

The default gateway for this single segment network is 192.168.1.1. Attempts to ping this address fail. The Management address is

192.168.1.201 and I can access the management unit from the console, telnet and the browser based web interface works as well.

What am I doing wrong?

Is there a way to disable the Layer 3 functionality of the switches and just use them as "dumb" Layer 2 switches?

At this point I'm willing to try almost anything. Any and all suggestions are welcome.

*-=[ end quoted text ]=-*

Some additional information.....

The school network used to consist of a single segment using the

192.168.1.x private address space. 192.168.1.1 is the default gateway and the address of the Cable Modem Gateway. The Cable Modem is supplied by Comcast and appears to be an SMC 8013WG that appears to be missing the wireless part.

There is a Windows 2003 Server that is on the netowrk. It is the DHCP server for the network. The scope the 192.168.1.25 thru 192.168.1.200. The Win2K3 server appears to be working properly.

One last thing.... The two 24 port switches are running the same version of software. The 48 port switch is running a different version of the software. I've also posted a question about that on the Netgear forums as well.

Any help or insight anyone has to offer will be greatly appreciated.

If/when I have a resolution, I'll post back to the group.

Thanks in advance!!

John

-- John P. Dearing A+, Network+, Server+ To reply just drop "YOUR PANTS" in my addy!!

Reply to
John P. Dearing
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Then the switches are working in layer 2 mode.

If you can ping everything but 192.168.1.1 then there might be a i incompatibility between the modem and the switch. Do you get a link (LED) on the switch and the modem side? Perhaps you need to connect the modem to the uplink port or use a crossover cable. Try to put the old hub between the modem and the switch.

Reply to
Manfred Kwiatkowski

It's not likely a crossover issue. Both the cable modem/router and the switch claim to support auto crossover.

Netgear says: "24 RJ-45 connectors for 10BASE-T, 100BASE-TX (Auto Uplink and auto-negotiate on all ports)"

SMC says: "4 - 10/ 100 Mbps Auto-Sensing LAN ports with Auto-MDI MDIX feature"

192.168.1.1 is not the default address assigned to the cable modem. According to the SMC docs, it should be 10.1.10.1 or 192.168.0.1. It is configurable, of course, but you mention having reset the cable modem. Maybe the cable modem isn't in the same network as your DHCP server is handing out?

/chris

Reply to
googlegroups

I was back there this afternoon and kinda have things working.

First problem was that not all of the switches were running the same version of the firmware. I was able to get them all up to 4.0.5.1. That helped a little but the stack wasn't stable.

What I had to do was abandon the idea of having the switches in a stack.

I now have the four switches as separate units that are linked together by their Gigabit ethernet ports (not the stacking ports). Once I did that, I was able to ping the default gateway (192.168.1.1) and then get out onto the Internet.

I also seem to have one defective FSM7328S switch. That will need an RMA. I also tried calling Netgear support again. "Raj" was going to check with a Senior support engineer and call me back in a half hour, that was three hours ago. I doubt I'll even hear from him.

Also, *NO* replies on the Netgear support forum. I guess I really stumped them! 8-)

My guess is that the combination of a defective switch and some undocumented stacking port cable distance limitation are the root of my problems.

Like I said, right now it's working and I'll have some tweaking to do but at least it isn't completely broke anymore.

When I have a complete resolution I'll summarize back to the group.

Thanks again guys for your suggestions.

John

-- John P. Dearing A+, Network+, Server+ To reply just drop "YOUR PANTS" in my addy!!

Reply to
John P. Dearing

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