4. Setup And Admin Access

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If you've ever set up a SOHO router, you'll be familiar with the drill involved in getting the 728TS up and running. It comes set to grab an IP address from your LAN's DHCP server, or you can use the Windows-only Smart Wizard Discovery Utility to initially find the switch and assign it a static IP. Unfortunately, the utility is also used to upgrade firmware, which could be a problem for those running other operating systems.

Instead of running the utility, I just played the old "guess-the-IP-address" game, and was rewarded with the login screen (password only, no user name) within a few tries. After entering the default password, I found my first bug?the inability to properly display the GUI in Firefox, as illustrated in Figures 3 and 4.

Figure 3 : GUI with Firefox 1.5

Figure 4 : GUI with IE 6
(click image to enlarge)

This Zoom view is the first thing you see when you log into the switch; it provides a quick overview of port status. Moving the mouse cursor over a port brings up a tooltip that shows only the port and switch number, but clicking on a port sends you to its Modify Port Configuration screen (see Figure 5)

Figure 5: Modify Port Configuration screen