Trendnet Switch Not Playing Nice With Netgear Switch

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ElectroPulse

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 19, 2013
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129
EDIT: Figured out what the matter was here: http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1040764063&postcount=7

Hello, all!

A few weeks ago, we got in a shipment of a couple of Trendnet switches to replace ones that died over the summer.

I hooked one up, absolutely no problem (this one: http://www.amazon.com/TRENDnet-16-P...F8&qid=1376386527&sr=8-1&keywords=trendnet+16).

However, when I plugged the other one (http://www.amazon.com/TRENDnet-Unma...TF8&qid=1376386720&sr=8-1&keywords=trendnet+8) into the SAME manageable Netgear GS724T V2 that the 16-port Trendnet was working fine with, it wouldn't communicate.

At the time, I didn't think much about it. I just plugged it into the 16-port Trendnet (which it communicates with fine), and went on my way.

However, tonight I have been working on setting up VLANs. All of the devices plugged into the 16-port switch need to be on one VLAN, while the 8-port Trendnet needs to be on another... Since it doesn't communicate with the Netgear (what I am using to manage VLANs), I am unable to do this directly.

Currently how I have it set up, is I took a 5-port Netgear switch we have here, and just used it as the mediator between the two switches.

Does anyone have any idea why this could be? Even for switches that it does communicate with, it takes a good 15-20 seconds before the lights come on. I'm hoping it's something I can fix locally... With the cost of shipping from here to the states, we might as well just buy another one.

Thanks!
ElectroPulse
 
Last edited:
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I'd get used Dell, HP. or Cisco gear off eBay before I'd buy new Trendnet, D-link, or even netgear.

Are you passing the traffic to the Trendnet tagged or untagged? If it is tagged, is it passed as a .1q trunk or simply as tagged packets?
 
Easy to fix!

Do the ghetto VLAN way. This is what I do for shitty SMB switches that I have to deal with.


1. On the Trendnet place all ports in vlan access for default vlan.
2. Designate one port on the netgear switch as an uplink, configure it as an access port for the trendnet VLAN.
3. Plug the uplink from the trendnet into the netgear.

On the trend net there is no vlans, so it will send out untagged packets via the uplink. Once it hits the port on the netgear side it will be tagged as the trendnet vlan keeping it seperate. This is fine if everything on the trendnet is going to be the same VLAN. But if you are going to try to chop up ports via VLAN on the trend netswitch then it will not work.
 
RocketTech said:
I'd get used Dell, HP. or Cisco gear off eBay before I'd buy new Trendnet, D-link, or even netgear.

Are you passing the traffic to the Trendnet tagged or untagged? If it is tagged, is it passed as a .1q trunk or simply as tagged packets?
Click to expand...

Ah, hey RocketTech, you seem to answer all my threads :D (I'm the dude working at the mission school)

Anyway, since I'm outside the US, I figure purchasing things off ebay may not be the easiest solution...Especially if there's a problem with the item. Would suck to pay ~$80 for shipping (one-way), to find out it needs to be shipped back... Figured with a new device it would be less of a chance. (That, and because even used HP/Cisco switches are a bit pricey for our budget, especially since all we need in these locations are unmanaged switches)

As, for the VLANs, I'm running it untagged. However, this shouldn't be the cause... It was doing this even before the idea of running VLANs was suggested to me.

I'm wondering if there's some sort of legacy setting in the Netgear that is no longer supported on some newer switches? (It was made like 8 years ago)

Pharacon said:
Easy to fix!

Do the ghetto VLAN way. This is what I do for shitty SMB switches that I have to deal with.


1. On the Trendnet place all ports in vlan access for default vlan.
2. Designate one port on the netgear switch as an uplink, configure it as an access port for the trendnet VLAN.
3. Plug the uplink from the trendnet into the netgear.

On the trend net there is no vlans, so it will send out untagged packets via the uplink. Once it hits the port on the netgear side it will be tagged as the trendnet vlan keeping it seperate. This is fine if everything on the trendnet is going to be the same VLAN. But if you are going to try to chop up ports via VLAN on the trend netswitch then it will not work.
Click to expand...

Thank you for the reply!

Unfortunately, that won't work... The Trendnet is an unmanaged switch. Our only managed switch at this point is the Netgear I am trying to connect it to.
 
Just trying to help out. I'm not sure what you paid for your trendnets, but you can get Dell PowerConnect 3548 (48 100mb, 4 GbE (2 SFP, 2 RJ45) all day for under $200. I just bought 2 PowerConnect 5424 (24 GbE) for under $350. Both are fully managed and bullet proof. I'm most familiar with the Dells, but Cisco, HP, and other stuff is there for the taking if you are patient and know what to look for. Sometimes the PoE versions of the 35xx series are actually cheaper, and the 48-port is almost always cheaper than the 24 port (3524). Personally, I'd rather take a chance on a bullet-proof switch than be assured of mediocrity at best.

As to your specific problem... Is contacting Trendnet an option?
I don't mess with Netgear stuff, but you want the port type to be the equivalent of 'access'. Port type 'general' should work; make sure you set the PVID to your desired un-tagged VLAN.

That being said, if one dumb switch (not a pejorative, simply a switch that is not managed at all) works on the port, any other dumb switch should work on the port, all settings being the same. I've seen some switches that only like port types of General or only Access, where either should work fine, so maybe look at that.

Trendnet is probably gonna have you test by connecting two computers to the switch- if it passes traffic, they'll be done. You might as well test it that way first.
Dunno if the Netgear supports backing-up your configuration- if it does, try that, then reset it to defaults and try again.
 
ElectroPulse said:
Ah, hey RocketTech, you seem to answer all my threads :D (I'm the dude working at the mission school)

Anyway, since I'm outside the US, I figure purchasing things off ebay may not be the easiest solution...Especially if there's a problem with the item. Would suck to pay ~$80 for shipping (one-way), to find out it needs to be shipped back... Figured with a new device it would be less of a chance. (That, and because even used HP/Cisco switches are a bit pricey for our budget, especially since all we need in these locations are unmanaged switches)

As, for the VLANs, I'm running it untagged. However, this shouldn't be the cause... It was doing this even before the idea of running VLANs was suggested to me.

I'm wondering if there's some sort of legacy setting in the Netgear that is no longer supported on some newer switches? (It was made like 8 years ago)



Thank you for the reply!

Unfortunately, that won't work... The Trendnet is an unmanaged switch. Our only managed switch at this point is the Netgear I am trying to connect it to.
Click to expand...

If the trendnet is unmanaged then it will work fine, you just skip the trendnet setup and just configure an access port for the trendnet vlan on the netgear.

You setup out be like this:

Router with VLAN's defined on p1 of teh router and that port plugged into port 1 on the netgear.

trendnet, plugged into port 2 of the netgear.



The netgear has port 1 trunked with both vlan's allowed. Port 2 is access port, vlan 2 (trendnet). Every other port is access vlan 1 (othernet).
 
Hey guys, figured I'd give an update.

The workaround I ended up using was plugging in my own 5-port Netgear Prosafe switch in-between the Netgear and the Trendnet switches. This worked, so I left it at that.

As it's getting closer to the school year, I've been occasionally thinking about other workarounds that don't involve me donating my switch to the school ;) So, this evening I decided to look into it... Figured if nothing else, I'd plug in one of the oh-so-abundant NICs we have laying around into the pfSense router and just use that to connect to the Trendnet. However, this wasn't needed.

I decided to mess around with the individual ports' settings, and hit gold when I changed the the port speed setting. On all of the Netgear's ports, auto is set for the speed... All of the cables connected to the switch are made up of the same (I believe) cat5e ethernet cable, but the auto-negotiated speeds range from 10m to 1000m. I'm not sure if it's crappy cable or crappy termination jobs... I haven't bothered to look at them this year as there has been more pressing matters, and we haven't had to transfer much data.

Anyway, it looks like the two switches were unable to auto-negotiate a speed. When I switched it to 100mbps, it came right up and started working.

Any ideas why this might be? Again, both of the new switches we ordered were gigabit Trendnet switches, and don't appear to be different aside from the port count. The 16-port works just fine (but it's connected with a short factory-made cable), but the 8-port doesn't (long custom-made cable of questionable quality). I'm guessing it's gotta be the cables.
 
Poor cables and/or incompatible PHYs, doing gigabit (properly) you _must_ use auto neg.
I have a Realtek based switch here which refuses to connect (link) with a Kyocera printer, tried different ports and cables. Replaced it and everything was fine so you may run into "funny" incompatibilities sometimes.
//Danne
 
I have had a lot of issues with netgear switches negotiating speed properly even with other netgear switches. Which is why I no longer use them and use trendnet dumb switches and or hp smart/managed switches for clients.
 
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