Stacking some Cisco 3550 series switches with GigaStack GBIC modules. We'll get the stack under management with the Cisco Cluster Management Suite from the early 2000s.
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Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio
Ah time to sit back and relax as I learn about networking gear for the next 30 minutes 😊
Behold the Cisco Network Cluster F*ck... ahh the good 'ol days. hehe
17:03 The first time you get GigaStacked (TM), it changes a man. Congratulations.
🙏
the 3750 catalyst were the first with "poe" it was called inline power!!! in my previous job we had a LOT of them for the cisco phones 7941 with cisco callmanager 3.0.... now that is a video!!! calling with cisco mgcp vlan only qos with those old obscure debugs.... i was a mad lad at that time and got certified on that... best and worst years of my life.
haha love it
@@clabretro please don't buy those it is a rabbit hole so deep you will not return.... but for content purposes... again... you will go mad.. you have been warned...
I offer myself as sacrifice
Tribute! As you will be doing battle. ❤ @@clabretro
I configured so many 3500-XL-PWRs back in the day
"Through the magic of buying theee!"... Freaking love it!
I took a CCNA class when I was in high school in 2006/2007. GUIs on Cisco equipment were never mentioned, and it implied they didn't exist. Everything was taught by the command line and we were using 2500 series routers...
I got a cert a few years ago and there was nothing about a GUI. I also have been working with them daily for years now and have never even thought to see if they have a GUI lol
I remember taking classes just like that around those times.. and on 2500 series indeed... also GUI did not exist (it did, but we were taught like it did not)
I went by the Seat Of My Pants Network University, learning and making sh*t up as I went. lol
I did mine in 2007, it was all serial cables for me.
That's because GUIs suuuuuck. They're almost always super slow and sometimes what you think you're configuring in the GUI isn't what is actually being configured. Edit: you also can't copy paste a config into a GUI. Having a text file that you can copy paste into many devices is quite a nice way to avoid fat fingering something bad.
Heh, neat. I did all the networking for a large music company back when they were hot stuff. At work we pronounced the name of those GBIC modules "Gee-bick." Not sure if that was common or typical but that's how our entire team referred to them. We never used any of the GUI stuff so it was fun to see. CLI all the way for us. Funny seeing you configure those devices feels like riding a bike for me. It's all ingrained into my mind forever!
A lot of folks have mentioned the "gee-bick" pronunciation so I suspect that was much more common than spelling out each letter. I've never done any of this professionally but you really do get a feel for that CLI in a very short time, it gets easier each time I mess around with these things!
yup, all I heard was gee-bick back in the day too. Also yay 3550s!!
We have hands on people in our DCs that still use the term gee bic when referencing SFP modules.
First thing any security-minded admin did was disable the http access. No Cisco person worth their sat used the web interface. Also erase all that html stuff (including the old image) so there would be room for the current image and a future image.
GBIC (pronounced gee-bick, not G.B.I.C.) only run at gigabit, they don't down-negotiate. Interestingly enough, you still had to match auto-config or manual speed-duplex on them even tho they are only capable of running at 1000-full. And SFPs were called mini-GBIC for some time before SFP was fully standardized, which I always found interesting. Some of us old-timers still call them that occasionally. Also, pre-gigabit switches only ran at MDI-X, where hosts and routers only ran at MDI. That's why all the ports have an X next to the port number. Auto-MDIX wouldn't happen for a few years after that. Eventually auto-MDIX would make it to 100m ports, but only after gigabit was more common. At that point you needed crossover cables for switch-switch and router-router or router-host. Most of the time we used red exclusively for crossovers because they were always infrastructure cables.
I remember the crossover days and how no one trusted Auto-MDIX in the very early days.
Thank you. Every time he said G.B.I.C. I cringed a little. 😂
It was probably less common in pro gear but I'm familiar with switches where a button physically rewires one of the ports to the other pinout. The older Linksys routers also had a separate "uplink" jack with the other pinout. I'm sure many people ran into issues when they plugged in "uplink" and port 4 at the same time and everything stopped working.
20:00 you can get flat magnets that you can glue onto the plastic facia, and then it'll just stick on to the metal housing. Best thing for them to be honest.
Oh great idea, I have painter's tape in there holding it on now but magnets make a lot more sense.
I've got several Catalyst switches stored away, and about the same number of GBIC modules - One current project is trying the set up an FDDI network that has similar sized fiber heads as GBIC.
FDDI would be cool! been following your token ring adventure, really interesting
@@clabretro - Token-Ring is a natural network for PS/2s, because it can be a challenge to find a good 10Mbps Ethernet adapter in microchannel (and true 100Mbps Ethernet doesn't exist in MCA). Since it can be set to 16Mbps with no data collisions, it is faster as well. There are 100Mbps FDDI (32-bit) microchannel adapters, but the overhead of getting fiber patchcables and a concentrator would be hard/expensive.
GBICs and X2's always looked so goofy to me!, impressive how we shrunk them all down a few years down the line
I literally laughed out loud when you came across the need for a crossover. Such a "rookie" mistake, but it's definitely one I would've made myself today. Completely forgot that like-systems would need a crossover back in the day. Really entertaining video - you've got yourself a new sub. Keep up the great content.
Absolutely this. It was such a basic tenant that, in the last couple decades, has become such a non-issue that you can completely forget that it was ever a thing you needed to do.
You really miss auto-mdix when you don’t have it. I remember back in the day some switches having a physical button that changed from MDI to MDI-X so you didn’t need a cable. Auto MDI-X came from HP and was integrated into the 1000Base-T standard but some vendors have implemented it on 10/100 gear.
I seem to remember that the 2900's didn't have auto-mdix?
I used to carry around little button RJ45 adapters that would switch straight through to crossover so I didn't need extra cables. I kept a few just for the memories. 🔌
I had one of those 2900 switches when I was in my early 20s that my professor sold to me for cheap when he upgraded his companies network. Was only a few years old at the time, ran my entire house from that thing for a decade. if it wasn't 100 base, id still be running it!
I do not understand half of this stuff but man do I love your videos and everytime I learn more
God I love it when the switch/router/firewall has a little pixelated fella I can click on in the insecure java-based web GUI. Congrats on the camera upgrade by the way!
nothing better 😆 and thanks!
that java based GUI must be less insecure than the JS mess we get nowadays
I did have one 3550 in my shelf at the previous job. Did work great to test things like trunks on firewalls and as a simple L3 switch to test firewall configs
Nice one :) I've worked with Cisco switches/routers since the late 90s and I've never used the GUI, only the CLI. In fact, we used to delete the entire "install folder" and only run the .bin file to get extra space on the flash drive so we could upload a new version of IOS without deleting the old version first. Those were the days :)
Man, this Uber-nerd networking stuff really soothes my troubled mind for some reason 😂 In the mood for some gigastacking myself right about now!
highly recommend taking a look at nortel gear at some point. the 5520 in particular has a soft spot in my heart, and can be stacked up to (iirc) 10 units high.
someday!
Lets go!!!! back to networking with clabretro!!!!
When I did CCNA/CCNP we were told about the existance of GUIs, but were not allowed to use them for class or tests because learning the console was more important. If that was the norm for Cisco classes, it is no surprise that so few people know about or used them. Anyway, I just finished binging all your videos yesterday and here you are with a new one, good timing. :D
Great video as always! The thing that I thought was the coolest was the visual indications on all of the ports, even the ports on the GigaStack™ modules (and the fact that there was a visual representation of those modules!). Definitely a lot of work went into that.
I cant love this channel enough, its so entertaining but also educational and very well produced...
At 7.37, i can almost feel your struggle! Thank you for another great video, i didn´t really know i had a thing for those old neat things, now i know. ❤
Love it! The Java GUI is gold!
This was a great first video finding ya, now a GIGASTACK fan
This is so cool! The gear has a beautiful and distinct style, reminds me of retro game consoles. Especially the GBIC modules with their translucent plastic remind me of GameBoy accessories. Modern enterprise networking gear has more of a "hardened industrial" design. Thank you for sharing :)
Great stuff, thanks for making this video. I used to work with Cisco stuff in early 2000's and all the issues with versions, features (and costly licenses) are coming back to my mind when watching the video. My first introduction to CDP protocol was from some Cisco software which installed that protocol / driver to Windows 4.0's and then BSOD in the next boot. It took a long time to figure out what caused BSODs and what CDP even was. They never told that even on courses targetting for entry level certifications.
really interesting, was planning to hunt down some software to turn CDP on for a PC eventually!
Huh. I don't think I ever knew that was a thing. Or at least I don't remember hearing about it.
@@nickwallette6201 I can't recall it being really a big thing. However Cisco pushed CDP to some of their software solutions at least in early 2000's. We never really got why as it was not explained but we learned to disable the protocol the hard way before rebooting the Windows box after Cisco's sw installation.
i was about to watch an older video and i got blessed with a new one
I had a bid for upgrading wallyworlds networks. It was a great time. I recognize these catalyst switches, they used them outside of the server room to have closer local switches as their stores grew in size. The server side had the cisco 4500E clusters. Their networks are absolute mayhem prior to the overhauls since they had 4 gens of tech meshed. I went to one that still had the shop setup on vampire taps and coax for 10base5. That one took a little longer to deploy with more than a few change orders. At the flagship Bentonville location we finished a launch and at 4 am realized that the engineers miscalculated the power budget for the metric ton of APs. We had to revert back to the old system thats now sitting on the floor and have it all working before 7am while the software engineers figure it out and so the store can run during the day. Nightmare. That was 2 extra days in the field to resolve and the hotels were cheaper than the trip charge to go back home for a day so we hung out. The new APs running at gig took too much power. The short term fix was to back all the APs off to half duplex until they could ship more switches.
IOS is a surprisingly common name to use in the tech space, Nintendo called the Wii's underlying kernel IOS, which ran on the tiny ARM chip on the GPU (Yep, the Wii had 2 CPUs). It's a pretty interesting coincidence that there were 3 different kinds of IOS.
Very cool!
I'm guessing Nintendo did NOT settle with Cisco, and just did the most Nintendo thing you could do -- stood there flanked by lawyers, saying "Go ahead. File a suit. I dare you."
@@nickwallette6201 Nintendo never publicly stated it was called IOS, it was just an internal name that the modding community picked up on (according to WiiBrew it's also called IOP in places). Cisco probably doesn't even know it exists, nor cares enough to spend money going to court.
IBM also had an operating system they called i, which ran on the as/400. Not sure if they ever spelled it out like "i OS" or anything, though.
@@thetechconspiracy2 There's symbols with IOS in them, that's where we get it from
I'm a simple man. I see the words GigaStack Cluster, I click.
lol, same
enjoyed this and thought to my self im watching this and have a rack of these switches ive not turned on in years
Another weekend with legacy Cisco gear 😁 thanks for sharing
This is cool. I've never seen this CMS software before. Smart keeping an XP vm handy for the IE/Java days.
Game changers for schools/colleges/campuses back then! GUI was never advised though..
I always wondered why other technicians i worked with called SFPs GBICs, now i know
Before SFP was standardized, Cisco SFPs were called mini-GBICs. You can still find them marked that way.
I NEED A PART 2 ASAP, I ALSO WANT ALL OF THOSE REALLY BAD!
Nice IBM Power5 cameo.. smooth..
Not just enterprise, but also service provider. The 3550 series were used a lot as managed CPE on the end of leased lines.
We're still using a few of these.
I'm also curious about that weird PCB compass. Maybe it's a logo for the company that made the PCB. A very flamboyant logo.
Oh cool you got one of those ESS shirts from the Connections Museum store!
I will admit to being a lazy network guy. I only used the Cisco GUI if the cli command was a million miles long to type out. I always configured the GUI “ just in case “. Great video series
oh interesting! it'll be interesting to hear what comments come in, usually they tend towards "we always used the CLI" but maybe it depends on the series of Cisco switches. at any rate this CMS UI definitely would've made it very easy and it was dead simple to setup
When you get to the newer software like CCP (Cisco Configuration Professional) you'll start swearing off GUI interfaces. Cisco still can't design decent ones, even to this day. @@clabretro
I worked with those back when they came out, only used cli though.
Perhaps the best named product ever?
I have one of those Cisco 3550 12g aggregation switch's
I love these vids
There was a line of Dell Stackable switches that used HDMI cables for stacking.
20 years ago I would have been screaming "crossover cable" but it has been so long since that has been necessary.
The Cisco Switch naming convention of the is if is starts with 2 it is a layer 2 device if it starts with 3 it is a Layer 3 switch so can route packets
I was literally thinking about installing a PCIE modem in my home server the other week for the lulz. Home lab modem all the way!
We need more videos. I love to learn from your videos 😍 running a cisco 2960 24p gigabit switch as my main network switch. Wanting to learn more about Cisco routers and host one of those. I have one just don't know how to use it yet.
glad you like them!
BTW may I ask what vm envirement are you running? Esxi or proxmox? I'm confused how to do Vlan tagging on proxmox host.
Proxmox but I don't do any VLAN tagging, I have a dedicated hardware NIC passed through to the XP VM and that's how I was hooking things up.
@@clabretro ah what hypervisor would you suggest moving to from esxi? I need to upgrade in the future running esxi 6.7 today. My hardware is old ish. Hp microserver gen 8. Kind of limited by space at home so servers need to be tiny :)
I now feel ancient that a networking technology I learned at the (currently) 1/3 way point in my career is now considered retro! I wonder if in 20-odd years you'll see channels experimenting with Cisco 9xxx gear and DNAC :D
heh sometimes I feel bad having "retro" in the channel name 😄
24:25 HAH! Caught me by surprise that one.
I can’t wait until you can get your hands on some 6509 modular chassis. I used to run those in a prior life. Those things are a beast. Electrical bill might go up a bit though.
I guess sfp/sfp+/xfp ports on switches carry some of the magic of these GigaStack. currently trying to get two sfp to fiber and some patch fiber to play with! (maybe even a broken patch so I don't fry the other module's rx diode)
No idea about the internal meaning of the compass rose; but since all cardinal directions are north it would be representing the south pole, where all horizons lead to the north. The four question marks would then be because there isn't an east or west when you're standing on the south pole, so the derived values that would appear there are meaningless or undefined. A symbol like that fits all sorts of symbology and in-jokes and references.
Very good video
I got full shelf of 3550 which were replaced and 3550-12g still in production at current place😳
Great video as alyways would love to have a retro lab but there isint local stuff and postage is so high espacially to Finland from lets say USA keep it going!
Man you are so cool 😎 i was watching your video like a kid is enjoying making his favourite toy 😂😂😂 great man😊
Heh. Back in the good old days, if you bought a Cisco device, and bought SmartNet with it (which of course you did), then you would get uncontrolled access to the entire software library. Not just for your hardware, but the images for, like, everything they made. You paid to license certain features, and that was the IOS image you were given with the hardware. As long as your SmartNet coverage was current, you could just drop into the downloads and grab the latest version any time you wanted to. One might ask, "If you had access to the whole library, what prevented you from buying the standard L2 license, and then downloading the L3 image?" ... So about those GBICs....
great work! I'm pretty sure the Cisco GBIC module like the WS-G5483 will *only* work at gigabit speed, it doesn't support 100Mbps to link up to the 2900 switch.
I had a feeling, I couldn't find anything about it doing any other speeds when I did some more research later!
Yeah, there was no auto-mdix in the 100m standards, only with 1000baseT. That's why you'll see a physical button on older 100meg stuff, to do the crossover. Back in the day all my crossover cables were RED in color, so I knew what they were for. Other companies I worked for used different colors, but to do the same identification. ;-) @@clabretro
@@pauldunecat This is my memory too. There were/are SFP's that would go down to 100, but I never saw a GBIC that did. Autonegotiation with non-GBIC form factors was also an issue where I had to bounce through the various permutations of speed and duplex on both sides.
@@wlhyatt100 SFP ports still don't do multi-rate. SFP+ technically only runs at 1000 or 10g. What has changed is the SFPs themselves can do the memory buffering required to run at multi-rate, so it presents to the host as 1000 or 10,000 but can link at 10/100/1000/2500/5000/10,000 internally.
Another top video. 😌 I’m not going to say that the 3550 is a multilayer switch so could be used without the vxr, that would be no fun. It’s imperative that the vxr is used. Never use vlan1, just no ip it and use other vlans, 1 for management and another for data. Your correct, most of us network admins don’t use gui. It’s slower than cli configuring and http/https just adds an extra attack surface.
Very, very limited routing capabilities. I recall having to use Ethereal (before it was forked to Wireshark) to capture why we were getting one-way audio between Cisco VOIP phones that had a first-hop route through a 3550. Poor thing couldn't keep up with the rate of traffic with VOIP (very high rate of packets per second, even if the traffic was only .. 8kbps?). Replaced it with a real router and the problem went away.
@@jroysdon oh 100%, it's would cause more pain than good in the real world. However, for a lab environment it's ok.
@@jroysdon The 3550 could route at line-rate but only for very basic routing. Anything clever got punted to the CPU at which point performance fell off a cliff. You probably had a QoS/ACL/etc feature turned on that caused the traffic to be punted.
Pretty much of a Network Stack!
I always like to look at guis
Those old switches performed very well back in the day. Should do close to line rate. Would be cool to see some iperf load tests across them in a future episode.
agreed! I didn't have time to include some perf tests this week but I'd like to in the future, it'd be cool to saturate all the links under load
If I remember right , on the aggregate switch they'd crap out around 3-4gbit across the switch. Lost packets and overruns. We replaced the last ones around 2004 for that very reason.
All that cisco blue, gebik's and licensing issues with emi/smi gives me good old early '02-05 flashbacks. Also, it reminds me how much I preferred juniper over cisco.
Once you get used to Junos, there's just no going back. IOS feels like trying to use vi. I know there are people who are super proficient in it, and there are some things that are legit easier to do. But outside of those corner cases, it isn't worth the headache.
I go to the Virginia Tech Surplus Auction every month and they often have pallets of used networking equipment up for bid. Now when I see that stuff, I think of you.
I'm honored
We had stacks of the 3550. I remember how cludgy they were to program. Very robust though.
Using FireWire cables and connectors is not unlike how janky PCIe adapters use USB 3.0 cables. They just happen to be rated for high enough switching frequency.
OOOH, I remember those...
I think it'd be fun if someone made a game that licensed the look and feel of major switch operating systems, then made a virtual network simulator. You could learn valuable skills while having fun. The game could introduce various issues for you to overcome and fix. The worst problem is going to be the manager who requires needless complicated proprietary software installs to justify the free coffee mug and keychain he got from the vendor.
We had nothing but problems with the 3750 stacks, definitely causing more downtime than it saved us from.
Hey colby, can you take a look at some Cisco 800 Series Integrated Services Routers, see if theres anything cool you can do with them? I've got 2 sitting in the closet.
Massive career flashbacks here man....
the GUI was rarely used because first it doesn't scale well. Imagine a massive campus with hundreds of stacks, its gets to be a bit annoying to manage in the interface. The other issue was with the java requirements. Seems like the app wasn't maintained and as the years went on it would break support with newer browsers and versions. Then the other aspect was you could go into CLI and make your changes and be out while your browser was still loading.
Dialup! Heck yeah!
nice
These switched supported gigabit with bigger packets, but if you flooded them from multiple ports they would crap out. Full gig on all ports on the aggregation switch wasn't possible as they were very oversubscribed.
awesome shirt lol
Hey! I'm curious about that asset tag on the Catalyst 2900 series switch - it's a bit fuzzy on the video. Where did it come from? I'm from Nebraska and I swear I could almost make out something about NE...
yup! says "Property of Nebraska Book Company Lincoln, NE"
We still train with 3750s in my college's network engineering course. Their really isn't much practical difference between the new and older switches.
i have 3 of the 3500xls here also acquired a juniper sds500 i think. a former coworker who managed them for over 10 years is goona help me learn them,
They are "just firewire" cables - 'tho definitely not the IEEE 1391 protocol. I've used those very cables to stack drives.
Interesting, what do you think about this? pinoutguide.com/NetworkCables/cisco_gigastack_pinout.shtml no idea how accurate it is but it seems to claim pins 1 and 2 are shorted in the Cisco cables.
@@clabretro Used to stack (chain) externally powered drives. They just pass-thru 1,2 so they don't care about them being shorted. If I plugged one directly into the computer, it'd short the 5V. (self-resetting fuse, because a short can happen) Being 6" long discourages such use. :-) Attempting to use a firewire cable on the GigaStack(tm) likely won't work, because firewire cables are supposed to swap the A/B pair. (even if you did short 1,2 to indicate the cable is connected)
I think you have auto white balance turned on with your camera. The image is brightening and dimming back and forth when you were filming yourself at the end.
Yeah those look exactly like firewire 400 ports to me too, you're not seeing things lol
GigaStack™ ClabCluster⁹⁰⁰⁰ ™
What is the advantage of the cluster? Does the cluster work as one switch or is it just a gui for configuration?
For these 3550 series units it's basically just one GUI to manage them in, but as I understand it later models like the 3750 actually became "one switch"
All you need is a crossover cable from ethernet to serial or console
Can anyone from Cisco explain the compass on the board? I could not find any explanation.
Is the gigastack connector the same as a firewire? 😂
yup lol
Devices with a trailing colon is very Amiga
AOL instant messenger
Looks like a fire wire port? I know it isn't. But lol
You want two more? I have one of the fiber and one of the fire wire. I'd probably be willing to donate. And the fire wire is labeled with the IEEE number for FireWire, so...
Gee-BICK
Why does the gigastack have clear plastic if only at the time the IT guy was going to see it. But clear plastic it is for the win