I have a couple Netgear GS108T 8-port gigabit switches around, so I decided to learn more about them.
The GS108T switch is interesting from a number of perspectives:
- it’s all-singing and dancing: quite full-featured managed switch with port mirroring, counters, jumbo frames (1,518 to 9,728 bytes, though Netgear standard is 9216 bytes for other devices), syslog, SNMP (OID 1.3.6.1.4.1.4526.11 aka ng700smartswitch, but only 32-bit counters – will overflow daily with even moderate gigabit traffic), VLANs, MAC filtering, IP filtering, etc.
- original version had telnet and HTTP admin access. Since 3.x firmware, just web administration. Actually, there’s 2 web servers in firmware: one in the Netgear firmware, and another in the Broadcom “loader” firmware fail-safe mode.
- adequate performance for small offices
- low power – around 8-12 watts
- cheap – around $100 retail
- this version is supposedly immune to the defective Chinese capacitor problems that plagued the 10/100 models earlier.
- comes with a PC management software CD, but you can ignore that and use a linux or Mac web browser.
Although you can just treat it like an unmanaged switch and just plug cables into it, you really should at least change the default password first and ensure SNMP is filtered, especially if it could face the Internet. Besides bricking your switch, somebody could sniff all traffic using port mirroring, read your password with SNMP, or deny access to your network with the port, MAC and IP filters.
The drawbacks with Netgear switches in general are lackluster customer support, and their bizarre relationship with the NTP community (in the past, Netgear hard-coded the IP addresses for time servers. Then they provided a time server, only to yank it later. Now they still don’t document how to configure their switches for time the right way with pool.ntp.org.)
The web UI is quite comprehensive, but uses frames and extensive JavaScript, so does not work at all by default in elinks or lynx. A workaround to login and get a read-only listing of settings is to save the login.htm screen, add a regular submit button, and point the form tag to your switch URL.
<html> <body> <form name="login" action="http://192.168.0.239/login.cgi" method="post"> Password: <input type=password name=passwd value=password> <input type=submit> <input type=hidden name=rtime> </form> </body> </html>
After logging in, this form can reset the switch:
<html> <body> <form name="reset" action="http://192.168.0.239/restart.cgi" method="post"> <input name="confirm" type="hidden" value="yes"> <input type=submit> </form> </body> </html>
One of my units has an older firmware version, with telnet support. It was discontinued likely because it got out of date compared to the web version, and possibly ecos is not used now for maintenance or GPL-license issues. There don’t seem to be that many options compared to the web UI, though the load configuration command could be a work-around for that.
$ telnet 192.168.0.239
login: admin
password: ********
Welcome to ECOS shell
ecos> factorycfg
Usage:
factorycfg show
factorycfg get
factorycfg write = ...
where magic is FCFG (to prevent accident)
ecos> factorycfg show
macaddr=00-1e-2a-ab-37-7c
modelname=GS108Tv1h1
boardtype=bcm.robo
bootver=V1.0.0_02
swver=V1.0.0_01
protocolver=1.0.0
ecos> ifconfig
eth0: off
eth1: DHCP failed; fallback to static
IP: 192.168.0.239
Netmask: 255.255.255.0
Gateway: 192.168.0.1
ecos> help
counters Displays CPU counter
exit exit shell
factorycfg Factory configurables
help Displays Help information
httpd Enable/disable HTTPd at startup
lacp lacp configuaration
load Load configurations
logger Logger configurations
showlog Show logs
nvram nvram utility function
reboot Reboot System
rstp Displays/configure RSTP
save Save configurations
showMem displays memory info
showThreads Displays running threads information
telnetd Enable/disable telnet daemon
ifconfig configure interface
ecos> counters
################# Counter #################
end : rx counter 1440
end : tx counter 709 -- bc 21 mc 0 uc 688
discovery : rx counter 0
discovery : tx counter 0
#######################################################
ecos> showlog
Usage: showlog []
NOTE: logs are shown from latest entry to oldest entry
except that starting index is specified.
ecos> showMem
Memory Information: Total 10587360 Free 8904556 Max 8837100
ecos> showThreads
ID: 0003 name: Network alarm support pri: 6 state: 1
ID: 0004 name: Network support pri: 7 state: 1
ID: 0005 name: Main App pri: 8 state: 1
ID: 0006 name: monitor pri: 3 state: 1
ID: 0007 name: flashlog pri: 8 state: 1
ID: 0008 name: bcmDPC pri: 7 state: 1
ID: 0009 name: FactoryDefault pri: 5 state: 1
ID: 000a name: bcmARL.0 pri: 8 state: 0
ID: 000b name: impprot pri: 8 state: 0
ID: 000c name: tCOUNTER.0 pri: 8 state: 0
ID: 000d name: bcmTX pri: 7 state: 1
ID: 000e name: multiAsyncTX pri: 8 state: 1
ID: 000f name: bcmLINK.0 pri: 8 state: 0
ID: 0010 name: httpd pri: 8 state: 0
ID: 0011 name: httpd_timer pri: 8 state: 0
ID: 0012 name: snmpd pri: 8 state: 1
ID: 0013 name: rmon_counter pri: 8 state: 0
ID: 0014 name: rmon_resource_reclaim pri: 8 state: 1
ID: 0015 name: bcmRX.0 pri: 7 state: 1
ID: 0016 name: timer_thread pri: 8 state: 0
ID: 0017 name: Dot1X_rad pri: 8 state: 0
ID: 0018 name: telnetd pri: 8 state: 1
ID: 0019 name: discovery pri: 8 state: 1
ID: 0001 name: Idle Thread pri: 31 state: 0
ID: 001c name: telnet client pri: 8 state: 0
ecos> save
Usage: save name|group|all|factory [|]
ecos> save all
result=OK
ecos> nvram show
[...]
ecos> nvram get STARTUP
boot -z -elf vflash0.os: ; boot -z -elf vflash0.os2: ; ifconfig eth1 -addr=192.168.0.239 -mask=255.255.255.0 -gw=0.0.0.0
ecos> exit
The ecos terminal program understands semi-colon as a command separator, but quoting seems to be a syntax error. Thus you can change commands that originally contained embedded spaces to something new, but cannot change the value back to the original.
If the switch default admin IP address of 192.168.0.239 doesn’t match your network settings, you can do this in linux:
# ip addr add 192.168.0.100/24 dev eth0
Using the linux ip command allows you to add this address on top of your existing address, so you can still be connected to your network.
If you configure jumbo frame support on your switches and hosts, you can test that with the ip route get command:
# ip route get 192.168.1.1
192.168.1.1 dev eth0 src 192.168.1.100
cache mtu 9000 advmss 1460 hoplimit 64
Bricking the Netgear GS108T
If the GS108T cannot successfully load the Netgear firmware at boot time, then it remains in Broadcom loader mode.
(A careful reader of this blog post can figure out how to do that in about 5 minutes.)
Effectively loader mode is the same as “bricked”, since there are no end-user tools available to fix the switch configuration with, and resetting the switch or re-installing Netgear-provided firmware doesn’t fix the loader problem – those actions only reset the Netgear-specific settings. Thus time to RMA the unit for a replacement.
Here are some images showing what loader mode looks like:
Netgear GS108T web admin showing Broadcom firmware upload form
Netgear GS108T in loader mode according to the SmartWizard utility
kb.netgear.com: Default Password for NETGEAR Devices
kb.netgear.com: What is the Jumbo Frame Supported by Switches and Adapters?
kb.netgear.com: Reset and Restore the NETGEAR device to Factory Default Settings
kb.netgear.com: Defining Terms: Power Cycle, Boot, Reboot, Restart, Reset, and Hard Reset
kb.netgear.com: Where to Get TFTP for Managed Switch and Access Point Upgrades
A Switch Even a Penguin Can Love
Netgear KB: GS108T 8-Port Gigabit Smart Switch
Linux Configure Jumbo Frames to Boost Network Performance / Throughput
networkworld.com: Jumbo frames? Yes!
Linux Configure Jumbo Frames to Boost Network Performance / Throughput
Dr. Joe: Jumbo Frame Clean Networking Gear
James could you provide an example of a syslog record entry in full DEBUG mode from the gs108t?
Hi Mike.
My 1.x firmware version (the command-line fw one) got bricked, and it will be a while before I get another one.
Next time I play with a 2.x fw version I’ll see what’s available.
Any reason you’re specifically interested in syslog output?
Thanks, James.
Hi James, I was just wondering, is it possible to add static routes for the Vlan’s created in this switch. It is sort of useless to have Vlans without having the option to define routes. Would appreciate the answer. Besides that, nice post :-9