Review on 💼 Cisco Business CBS250-8FP-E-2G: Advanced Smart Switch with 8 Port GE and Full PoE, Enhanced by Limited Lifetime Protection by Scott Schram

I ordered a Cisco Business CBS250 Smart Switch (model number BS250-8P-E-2G) to replace a working but somewhat dated Netis switch substitute. The Cisco Business CBS250 Smart Switch is cryptically referred to as an eight-port Gigabit Ethernet switch. In fact, however, it has ten Gigabit Ethernet ports. Find out! It also has two combo Gigabit Ethernet (copper/SFP) uplink ports that are presumably used to daisy chain additional Cisco Business CBS250 smart switches. The switch supports PoE (Power over Ethernet) and can deliver up to 67W in total. VLANs and access control lists (ACLs) are supported. Although the switch offers some network security features, they are not as secure as a hardware firewall. The Cisco Business CBS250 Smart Switch that I received came with 19" rack mounting ears that attach to the switch. . I put the ears on because I wanted to mount the switch in my 19 inch network rack. Unfortunately, the power supply is not installed in the switch. This is an external power supply with a very thin cable going to the switch. This looks like a less reliable way to power the device. I was really surprised that Cisco called this switch a "business switch" but didn't bother to build an internal power supply into the switch. The Netis switch it replaced had no management capabilities but worked reliably at the core of my SOHO network for years. does his job. The Cisco Business CBS250 Smart Switch, on the other hand, is fully managed either through a dedicated management port or through a web browser. In fact, the management options available in this switch are extensive. More than I've ever seen in a network switch. The variety of control options can be intimidating. However, most of them can be left in the default configuration. (Password and account must be changed and done immediately, as they can easily be guessed by unauthorized persons.) I particularly liked the fact that all ten ports could be labeled according to their function. This custom marker is displayed in the control software. I used port labels to show what was connected to each port. This is an extremely handy feature. The switch ships with a static IP address for management purposes. However, after connecting to the network, it will get a new and different dynamic IP address. This complicates the search for web browser control purposes as the IP address becomes unknown. I finally found the switch's reassigned IP address, but it took a while. I've tried enforcing a known static IP address using Web Control, but my efforts have been unsuccessful. Cisco instructions are basically Cisco instructions. They provide a small starter guide that is missing a lot of information, and they provide an administration guide that only a network engineer would want. There's nothing in between, which is a shame as it's really positioned as a SOHO switch - not necessarily plug and play, and not necessarily as complex as a full-fledged Cisco router. Documentation in the middle is welcome and should be provided. Changes to the switch in Web Based Management are of course temporary. They must be stored on the device to remain valid and may need to be copied to an external text file. A small red icon that looks like a 3.5 inch floppy disk reminds the user to save the new configuration. Does anyone remember what those floppy disks looked like and what that symbol means? My Cisco Business CBS250 Smart Switch came with old firmware (version 3.0.0.61). The current version as of the date of this review (May 2021) is 3.1.0.57. I downloaded and uploaded the new firmware version to the switch. The file update process was successful. However, before using the new firmware, the switch had to be rebooted. It wasn't apparent from the firmware update screen and my switch kept running the old software until I realized it wasn't fully up to date and restarted it.