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At my new workplace, thanks to the old system administrator, we have an unused Cisco Catalyst 2950T 24 (two gigabit ports, 24 100Mbit ports). It was used in a quite weird setup (the place has two internet connections - one governmental supplied one, let's call it X, and a commercial fiber network, let's call it Y).

I was hired to re-create a better, more suited network for this high school, as the current one is a patchwork of some 20 years of continuous "network development", including the old BNC network, some 10Mbit lines (yeah, I know...), and the new system which has 12 endpoints, and the central server.

The whole network is mainly 100Mbit now, and we're working on the cables now (replacing all the old, unused cables running around the place is a PITA work...).

So this switch had one role - it was placed between the network modem X and the web server running on that connection. Given the current financial status of our institute, our budget equals zero, and we have to use what we got in-house. So why not re-purpose this switch?

I did. Moved it to the new location, started setting it up, but the software was old and would not allow enabling the gigabit ports (which I wanted to use to connect to the room's control PC, and the main, our only and one, gigabit switch), and getting network through them.

The next step was upgrading the firmware of the switch. Given that I am pretty new with Cisco hardware and software, I read the different manuals, and went with the Cisco Network Administrator tool to upgrade it, but the upgrade failed.

Then I tried the TFTP server upgrade. It went well, all firmware files were in place, flash:html/ directory populated, IOS firmware in place, so let's set it up.

I connected to it, gave it the initial config (IP address, login info, name, etc.), and took it back to the endpoint it was replacing.

There I tried configuring the final parts, the connecting computers and all, but no, the web interface would not load. All browsers were showing that the connection was reset during transfer, so I checked into the packages using WireShark - and for some reason, after restart, the switch responds with zero-content HTTP packets!

And I literally mean it - as soon as the browser tries to access its HTTP service, running on port 80 (and it is running, as the port is open and detected), it returns the answer, but the actual content is in all cases, random amount of 0x00 bytes.

I've tried replacing the firmware with older versions, reinstalling the whole thing, resetting it to factory defaults, even erased the internal flash and put the firmware back, but there's simply no way of getting anything out of the web service.

What can be the issue, has anyone met this before?

fonix232
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  • Have you tried configuring it with Telnet? Or you could use the console port if it doesn't like Telnet. You'd need something with a serial connection and the correct cable for console access, but the CLI is better than the web config. – cpt_fink Nov 17 '14 at 00:13
  • Yes I did, most config went through the console port. Telnet was a no-go as it refused to connect even when it was enabled (and this model does not support SSH as far as I know). Thing is, the web interface would come handy to monitor the unit and configure some parts that are not so easily accessed. I do not wish to learn all the Cisco setup commands just to set up one bloody device! – fonix232 Nov 17 '14 at 01:31
  • The fact that it wouldn't respond on 23 or 80 is definitely odd. You rebooted several times already or I would suggest that... it could just be showing it's age. – cpt_fink Nov 17 '14 at 02:50
  • It is definitely not its age. It was put in use 6 years ago, and was barely even used. Before upgrading, it was working fine but some routing was not available. – fonix232 Nov 17 '14 at 10:53

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