Cheap and Quiet 10G Networking for the home

Introduction

The TP-Link TL-SX3008F is a 8-Port 10GE SFP+ L2+ Managed Switch (with some Layer 3 capabilities.) Its not too expensive, not too cheap, has decent reviews, and its rackmountable and fanless which is nice for a homelab.

Details below

• 8× 10 Gbps SFP+ fiber/fiber-cage ports (for direct 10G links using SFP+ transceivers)
• Web GUI, CLI Management (console, Telnet, SSH).
• Omada SDN Integration – Zero-Touch Provisioning (ZTP) and centralized monitoring.
• Layer 2
  • VLAN (802.1Q), IGMP Snooping, STP/RSTP/MSTP.
  • Link aggregation with LACP (up to 8 groups)
• Layer 3: Static routing for simple inter-VLAN/intra-network routing (no dynamic routing like OSPF/BGP)
  

Unboxing

Arrived in a simple box and included the following

• Nema 5-15p to c13 power cord (no wall wart/transformer)
• Serial Cable
• Rack Ears (and extra screws)
• Rubber Feet (for desk/shelf)

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Serial Connection

In order to configure via the cli, I will need to establish a console connection (cable included). For this I will use minicom on an adjacent RHEL Server. Below are the minicom settings.

Baud Rate	38400 bps
Data Bits	8
Parity	none
Stop Bits	1
Flow Control	none

I had to trial and error that specific serial port, but /dev/ttyS1 proved to be correct.

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Cli Configuration

Default credentials are admin/admin and you will be prompted to change the password upon initial login.

My Default vlan for my lab is VLAN10, so first we create this vlan on the switch

SX3008F(config)#vlan 10
SX3008F(config-vlan)#name DEFAULT
SX3008F(config-vlan)#exit

We next assign an unused IP from the subnet associated with vlan10.

SX3008F(config)#interface vlan 10
SX3008F(config-if)#ip address 10.1.10.48 255.255.255.0
SX3008F(config-if)#exit

Next we configure the default gateway (aka, next-hop).

ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 10.1.10.45

Now we configure our uplink port.

interface ten-gigabitEthernet 1/0/8
  description "Uplink-to-Cisco-3560G-Gi0/24"
  switchport general allowed vlan 10 untagged
  switchport pvid 10
  no switchport general allowed vlan 1

We now check the interface.

show interface configuration ten-gigabitEthernet 1/0/8
 Port      State       Speed     Duplex    FlowCtrl    Description
 ----      -----       -----     ------    --------    -----------
 Te1/0/8   Enable      10G       Full      Disable     Uplink-to-Cisco-3560G-Gi0/24

And show our IP interfaces.

show ip interface brief
 Interface            Status    Protocol  Shutdown  IP-Address         Type        Method  
 ---------            ------    --------  --------  ----------         ----        ------  
 VLAN10               up        up        no        10.1.10.48/24      Primary     Static  
 VLAN1                down      down      no        0.0.0.0/0          Primary     DHCP    

And lets check out the routing table.

how ip route
Codes: C - connected, S - static
       * - candidate default
S*      0.0.0.0/0 [1/0] via 10.1.10.45, VLAN10
        10.0.0.0/24 is subnetted, 1 subnets
C           10.1.10.0/24 is directly connected, VLAN10

Lets save the config

SX3008F#copy running-config startup-config 
 Start to save user config as the Next Startup Config file......
 Saving user config OK!

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Web Interface

Now that the new switch is pinging on our network, we can load its web interface and configure a couple more settings. First we will configure DNS.

Next we configure NTP.

You can view connected ports and port speeds as well

Click on any individual port and you can see its utlization

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Next Steps

Next steps will be the following

• Update Firmware
• Configure SNMP
• Configure and Connect Devices
• Install Omada Cloud-Based Controller (maybe)

Reference

• Managed Switch_CLI Guide
• TL-SX3008F(UN)_V1.6_Installation Guide
• https://www.omadanetworks.com/us/business-networking/omada-switch-aggregation/tl-sx3008f/