AD1021730
AD1021730
Disclaimers
The findings in this report are not to be construed as an official Department of the
Army position unless so designated by other authorized documents.
Brian Phelan
General Technical Services (GTS), Wall, NJ
Kelly D Sherbondy
Sensors and Electron Devices Directorate, ARL
Ram Narayanan
The Pennsylvania State University (PSU), State College, PA
14. ABSTRACT
A NETGEAR m4300 series managed network switch provides unparalleled control over a single network. The disadvantage is
a steep learning curve, which this technical note helps alleviate by providing instructions to perform the setup of a simple local
area network. It also attempts to explain the process along with other options, including port tagging, multiple virtual local
area networks, and additional switches, which may be useful in reducing latency and improving throughput.
ii
Contents
List of Figures iv
1. Introduction 1
2. Startup 1
5. Saving a Configuration 3
6. Adding/Deleting Users 3
8. Static Network 8
11. Conclusion 11
12. References 12
Distribution List 13
This report provides a short overview and quick tutorial on how to set up some
simple but important settings on the switch and lays a foundation for understanding
how to proceed in order to achieve maximum bandwidth and throughput of the
switch.
2. Startup
To start up the switch, plug it into any 120-V wall outlet. The power light will turn
solid yellow and then green after a minute or 2. If the light starts blinking yellow,
the switch is not working properly. Once the light turns green, the switch is ready
to use.
Windows will sometimes show an IP address without a gateway. This is not the IP
address of the machine. Wait until it has a gateway, the IP address will probably
change as well, and then that is the IP address of the machine. Linux does not do
this. In either case, the computer should have its final IP address within a minute.
In our case, it was in the 192.168.40.0/24 subnet.
The out-of-band (OOB) management port on the front of the system is guaranteed
to work in case the other ports are not dynamically assigning IP addresses.
For our management interface, the username is “radar” and the password is
“ARLpassword12” for all of these methods. Figure 1 shows the NETGEAR login.
a) The switch comes with a disk, but disks can also be found online on
NETGEAR’S website.2
b) The switch also comes with a USB cable, a generic USB Type-A to
Mini USB Type-B.
5. Saving a Configuration
The user can change settings and apply them without worry, but unless the user
saves the configuration through the Maintenance tab all the changes will be gone
once it is powered off (Fig. 2). This is a blessing and a curse. Power cycles every
time one makes a change, which can mess up the system. Save the configuration
every time a successful change has been made to the configuration.
6. Adding/Deleting Users
The default administrator is “admin” without any password. The secondary account
(in this case) is radar / ARLpassword12 for a more general audience. There is also
a “guest” user without a password with read-only access.
This is where one can add/delete users. One cannot delete the account one has
logged in with. We encourage using a password.
This process takes some time and understanding to master, because creating a new
VLAN does not create the virtual interface to actually use that new VLAN.
It is worth explaining here that a DHCP server creates a local area network that will
dynamically assign IP addresses to computers attached to the ports associated with
that VLAN. Any devices not DHCP-capable, like software-designed radios, must
Switching→VLAN→Basic→VLAN Configuration
The procedures for setting up the new VLAN (Fig. 3) are as follows:
1) Type the number of the new VLAN, any unused number between 2 and
4092.
The procedures for adding an interface to the VLAN (Fig. 4) are as follows:
Remember this when creating the DHCP Pool, as it will use the same
address.
Switching→VLAN→Advanced→VLAN Membership
The procedures for untagging all of the ports (Fig. 5) are as follows:
2) In the Group Operation drop-down menu, select Tag All, then Untag All.
With only one network switch box, do not tag anything. With a second network box,
one might have to read up on tagging.3
One needs ports that will connect to the new VLAN and automatically get an IP
address in that VLAN, so one must assign ports to use our VLAN (Fig. 6). Since
all of the ports are untagged, this step might not strictly be necessary, but it keeps
the switch in the loop, so do not leave these steps out.
1) Check the boxes on all the ports we want to be part of our new VLAN.
Note: One can double check VLAN membership here. Under the VLAN Member
column, all the VLAN IDs should be there separated by commas. One can also
double check that they are all untagged: if they are all comma separated under the
Untagged VLANs column and the Tagged VLANs column says “None”.
Excluding IP addresses is important for the computer as they are assign statically.
In order to make sure the DHCP server does not hand out an IP address already
being used by one of those computers, one must exclude the one being used (in our
case, we must exclude 192.168.40.1).
1) In both columns, type the IP address from the VLAN Routing Configuration
used to create the VLAN interface by typing a range in here; the user can
exclude a greater range of IP addresses. Remember, the range is inclusive.
2) Pool Name: Pick any one that is not already found in the drop-down menu.
4) Network Address: A subnet that is not already in use, with the last triplet
being 0 (for example, 192.168.1.0).
Note: Instead one could type “24” into the Network Prefix Length option,
but one cannot do both.
7) Days: 1
Note: This could be any amount of time, but 1 day is fairly standard in industry.
Once the settings have been adjusted, click Apply. Figure 8 shows the DHCP Pool
Configuration window.
8. Static Network
Configuring a static network is the simplest, most straightforward setup one can
achieve on this network switch. However, connecting 2 or more computers to the
network in this way makes all the features of the network switch useless.
To keep certain computers’ IP addresses static without having to reassign the same
IP in the network adapter every time the user connects, it is possible to configure
on the network switch by 1) excluding the IP address from the DHCP pool and
2) configuring the DHCP server to automatically assign the computer’s media
access control (MAC) address the desired IP address. Note: If the computer has
multiple Ethernet ports, one must connect from the same port on the machine to
take advantage of this feature or else set it up with the MAC address of each port.
Finally, to connect using an IP address that was dynamically assigned, one can clear
all dynamic bindings by navigating to System→Servies→DHCP Bindings
Information and then clicking Clear. The DHCP server will automatically reassign
all those connections, but avoid the IP of the computer connected statically.
The DHCP server automatically assigns the lowest available IP address. Assigning
a static IP higher in the subnet helps avoid IP address conflicts. For example,
192.168.40.200 will almost never be assigned by the DHCP server, so it is a good
place to assign a static IP. One will also need to exclude this address from the DHCP
server.
The ports on the computer that are connected to the link aggregation group (LAG)
on the network switch also need to be set up for port trunking. This report does not
go into detail on the process for each computer, because, depending on the
operating system, the process varies greatly.
This is very similar to setting up the DHCP server; however, now the user needs to
add the LAG ports to the VLAN, too. If one followed the steps for adding all ports
to a DHCP, this may have been done already.
Use the following path to add the LAG ports to the VLAN:
The procedures for adding the LAG ports to the VLAN are as follows:
Switching→LAG→LAG Membership
The procedures for adding ports to the LAG (Fig. 9) are as follows:
4) On the Unit 1 box at the bottom, select the ports. They should have a check
on them now.
Switching→LAG→LAG Configuration
The LAG recently changed with the new settings and the ports should be listed
(Fig. 10).
System→Stacking
11. Conclusion
A managed network switch, such as the NETGEAR m4300, has a great many ways
to set it up. To avoid filling up pages with text, many options are abbreviated,
increasing the barrier to entry for a new network manager. In this technical note,
we hope the learning curve for this particular managed network switch was greatly
decreased for a new user. The other goal was to help the average user to more
quickly understand how this particular network switch was set up in order to
achieve the desired performance. It should be noted that the setup outlined in this
technical note is not the optimal setup for the fastest throughput or lowest latency.
Although the network is fast, a more exact knowledge of the computers that will be
connected to the network would allow for more precise control of the packets
through the network switch, reducing latency for the network as a whole. As
previously mentioned, a multiple VLAN setup may also increase throughput. Both
of these were beyond the scope of this report, as this is a simple setup guide.
1. ProSAFE intelligent edge managed switches M4300 series data sheet. San Jose
(CA): NETGEAR; 2016 [accessed 2016 Jun].
http://www.downloads.netgear.com/files/GDC/datasheet/en/M4300.pdf.
2. How to access the command line interface using the console ports of M4100,
M4200, M4300, M5300 and M7100 series switches. Article No.: 23561. San
Jose (CA): NETGEAR; 2016 Sep 9 [accessed 2016 Jun].
http://kb.netgear.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/23561/~/how-to-access-the-
command-line-interface-using-the-console-ports-of-
m4100,?cid=wmt_netgear_organic.
3. Network Engineering: Why and how are Ethernet VLANs tagged? New York
(NY): Stack Overflow; 2015 Jun 2 [accessed 2016 Jun].
http://networkengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-and-how-
are-ethernet-vlans-tagged.