Cisco to Unifi Switches
What do I have
For anyone that follows my blog & YouTube channel, your know that I am an Cisco networking guy. I am studding for my CCNA qualification and use Cisco gear professionally out in the field. Currently at home, I used two switches to serve my home. I use the Cisco SG200-16 as my core switch and the Cisco SG300-8. Below are two pictures of the switches I currently have.
These switches are amazing, don’t get me wrong. They are perfect small business switches.
Why the upgrade?
So why am I upgrading them? Well honestly because I can. I am very sold on UniFi gear now and I have been loving the gear I already have. If you haven’t already, checkout my post on ‘WatchGuard to Unifi USG’. But I kept looking at my UniFi dashboard and seeing ‘Switches 0’ and this kind of made me what to try out some of the switches.
What did I get?
I ordered two switches to replace my existing ones and I ordered these directly from the Ubiquiti European store. I would recommend this as I found that comparing this with Amazon. I got the gen 2 hardware for the same price that Amazon was selling the Gen 1 hardware.
So for my main switch, I went with the UniFi Switch 24 × 1. This is a 24 port generation 2 switch with 2x SFP (not SPF+) ports. I don’t think I need 10 gigabit yet as the only thing that remotely pushes wired network is file copying and quite honestly, it is never impacted so much, that I cannot wait. So 10 gig was out of the question for me. This switch does not have POE. The only POE device I have is my UnFi AP-AC-LR. This has an injector and to be honest. I am fine without POE in my core switch. I am so exited about the augmented reality touch screen! An example of this can be seen below.
The other switch I got is the ‘UniFi Switch Lite 8 PoE × 1’. This is an insanely cool little switch. This one does have POE but only 30w per port. So I could move my existing AP to be powered from this. I chose this switch because it is small and easily wall mounted. This is perfect for my server closet.
Installation
So I have to say, the installation was probably the most painless as I have ever had with the UniFi gear. The hardest Installation I have had was the USG, but that was not terrible. With my existing Cisco switches, i configured a port on my management LAN, so that the new switches should be easily seen by my UniFi controller. Then I connected my new switch to that port and fired it up for the first time.
Following the lovely boot up animation, the switch was very quickly discovered by the controller. However I had to do a firmware downgrade. Following a discussion on the Ubiquiti users Facebook page. I found that these switches potentially had beta firmware installed.
I allowed the downgrade to happen before I adopted the switch and it was very painless. After the adoption had taken place. I started configuring my switch. I did this on my iPad and I found it very easy todo. The only thing I got a little annoyed at is that I had to configure all 24 ports on the switch to be on my home network (VLAN 10) one at a time. But there might be a way todo it all at once, but I might have missed it. Once done. It was done! Then I moved over my clients. I configured the last 4 ports on the switch to be all VLANs so that I could connect my USG, AP-AC-LR and my USW-Lite-8-PoE.
Once the USW-24-G2 was installed, I could now look at my USW-Lite-8-PoE. Once I connected this to my core switch (as I called it). I could adopt it and then it had to downgrade it, like with the first switch. Since doing this it was very easy to configure. This switch has 2 different VLANs on it as I have two IoT devices on this switch. Once setup, it was swapped out fine.
The only criticism I have is that the PSU for this switch is rather large and that is fine, but what is not fine, is that it is a European plug. I live in the UK and these plugs are not common here. But luckily I had an adaptor. But it is more cable mess.
Conclusion
My network is now getting seriously cool. Yes I know it is overkill for a home network, but this is a hobby at the end of the day and it gives me something to tinker with. I am a little hearted that only 8 ports of my 24 port switch is used. My 8 port switch is nearly completely full. I find myself looking for for devices to connect to the network.
I love the fact that my network draws itself now. It is not 100{dd02ca53089cac2432c56b1281023466f904f5e47d54aa45d3c7a4cebb0a242f} accurate, but it sorts out eventually. Below is a screen print of the network map from my UniFi controller. Some items are incorrectly positioned. I will let you work out what ones.
Networking, Tech, Ubiquiti
December 1, 2020
Author: John Hart
