initial cisco nexus setup without serial cable

Question

I've never used a cisco switch. On the used 3048t i just got, there's a dedicated management ethernet port on the back, so i was blindly assuming it would just accept a dhcp address and give me ssh, telnet or at least a webinterface. It does send DHCP requests, but then never responds to arp for those addresses.

The official documentation mentions you're supposed to connect via serial, but never mentions the cabling. It's not a DB9 connector so no way of knowing voltages, pins etc.

Is there a way to do to this over ethernet or do i absolutely need to find a cable, and which one could it be?

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited Oct 23 '20 at 15:14

2

Cisco has a standard serial cable, called a "console cable." You can find the pinouts on line, or I'm sure there many places to buy one.

edited Oct 23 '20 at 15:14

yagmoth555

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answered Oct 21 '20 at 15:54

Ron Trunk

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aep · Answer 2 · 2020-10-23T12:12:49.327

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It does seem to be possible without serial port. By default it requests "Power On Auto Provisioning" via dhcp, and there is an open source tool to respond to it.

https://packet2python.io/2018-12-13-poap/

The serial cable part number is 72-3383-01 but it's possible to use a makeshift adapter with a regular ftdi cable using this pinout:

edited Oct 23 '20 at 12:12

answered Oct 22 '20 at 08:05

aep

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initial cisco nexus setup without serial cable

2 Answers2