When we needed to add more PoE ports to our Grayslake campus I looked at the price tag of a new Cisco 3560-48PS starting at $4,000, I knew I should shop around. I've been looking at HP for a while now so we picked up a 2610-48-PWR for less than half. Good deal, but then I had to get them working together. This is how I got it to work.
First thing you have to know is that even though HP tries to be like Cisco and use a lot of the same terms on the command line, they're not.
What Cisco calls EtherChannel, HP calls a Trunk. This caused me much trouble early on. HP doesn't really have an equivalent to what Cisco calls a trunk port. All ports are access ports on HP and if you want to use a port like a trunk, you have to assign all the vlan's that you want to use on that port.
In my situation, I had to assign 3 vlans for my trunk. The other confusing thing is that there is no native vlan as you would think of one on a Cisco trunk. To do that, you set a vlan to the port as "untagged" wich makes it the default vlan for that port. Since you can only have one untagged vlan for a port, you have to make the others "Tagged".
If you are using Cisco phones (maybe any phone) you have to have a default vlan and then a voice vlan. The voice vlan has to be set as a static tagged port and then also defined as a voice vlan from the command line as follows:
ProCurve Switch 2610# conf
ProCurve Switch 2610(config)# vlan 10
ProCurve Switch 2610(vlan-10)# voice
After this, you should be set. Well, sort of. Cisco 7912G, 7940G, and 7960G phones are not 802.3af PoE compliant they won't power up on this switch. The solution, add a patch cord. When you do, the positive signal of the PoE gets sent on the correct pin and the phone works. Kind of a bummer but $200 of crossover cables you can have all your phones up and running.
So, about $46 a port for HP as compared to at least $83 for the Cisco, time will tell if it is worth it.
Oh, With HP you also get Lifetime Warranty and updates!
** Update **
After doing some more testing it appears that the phones are not getting an IP address from the Voice VLAN and are not using it. This will not work in our environment because it is designed to have voice traffic on the voice VLANS. If we had newer phones like the 7941G which support LLPD-MED which acts like Cisco CDP, we could make them work. Back to the drawing board :-(
**Update**
If I had listened to what @procurvehelp on Twitter had told me, I would have had a solution.
@procurvehelp "Todo this: Press Setting, choose Network, choose Admin VLAN, press **# to go admin mode, change op & admin vlans, save & reboot."
On the Cisco phone, after you change the Admin. VLAN Id and press the "Validate" soft key, press the "Save" soft key. After that, the phone reboots with the correct settings and you are now on the Voice vlan! So, it is possible to get 7912G, 7940G, and 7960G phones able to work with an HP ProCurve 2610-PWR-48.
**Update**
Last night we fully cut over to the ProCurve and everything is working great! I'll have to wait to see if we have any call quality issues but I don't think that we will. Think I might look at some more HP gear but just make sure that I have the newer phones!
14 comments:
With all due respect, comparing the 3560 to the 2610 is like comparing a Ferrari to a Pinto.
The 3560 is a layer 3 that can often be found at the core of one's network.
Good luck with your HP switches. I HATE THEM. For plain old layer 2 stuff they're fine, but I have rooms full of their layer 3 switches and they drive me nuts on a daily basis.
Sure they're cheap and you get a lifetime warranty. Wait until you have a *REAL* issue and need support.
I agree that the Cisco is far superior to the HP in many ways. But, when you just need a car to get down the block, the Pinto seems to be a good choice. We have many 3560’s but we are hardly using the feature set. Many all we only use one at each site as an L3 switch and the others as just a L2 switch and power phones. Thanks for the comments Jeremy.
Well I love the HP Procurve switches. I use them in a large enterprise environment with over 40 remote sites. We have 2 centralized Data Centers. We use all models mainly the 5400zl series. I even use them to connect DS3 circuits using bridges eliminating the need for a $18,000 Cisco router. This saves me a ton of money. I have had great luck with support. I also use Cisco and have for years they where #1 but HP is giving them a run for their money. Cisco is way over priced and I could go on and on with issues I have had with Cisco but they all have their problems and HP has been rock solid for us
What do you mean when you say "The solution, add a patch cord."? Are you referring to a cross-over cable?
We only have one network post per station and are looking to install the 7940 phones with HP 2610-PWR switches. Thanks!
Just saw your updates.. Congratulations!
Correct... the 2610 needs a crossover cable to support pre-standard 802.3af devices like the 7940G phones.
I have a ProCurve 2610 24p/12 PWR and an old Cisco IP phone 7912.
I tried to connect it to the switch both a normal patch and a crossover patch but doesn't work.
Anything wrong or what?
Thanks.
massimo martini
Vicenza
Italy
Massimo - Make sure that you have PoE enabled. Do you have any other PoE devices to test it with? You have a slightly different switch than I so your millage may vary.
Thank Jeremy,
HP switch POE works fine with SNOM 320, but not with my Cisco devices.
Now, it doesn't matter because I've used the Cisco power supply, but the thing is kind strange.
Moreover, it's new HP Switch...
From my point of view Cisco is not suite enough to VoIP world.
I'm getting ready to do the same configuration here. Thanks for all your help. It looks like with all of this I should be able to get moving along. I'll let you know how it works out.
Best,
Scott
Glad I could help Scott. If you are just starting out, having the newer model phones would help out a lot as you would not have to use cross over cables or manually set the phones.
Hey Jeremy,
I did the testing on my switch today. It went really well. Thanks for all your help. This was spot on.
Hi,
You should check the Catalyst 2960 LAN lite with PoE (WS-C2960-48PST-S). It should cost the same as the 2610, has lifetime warranty and you don't have to read a tutorial to plug an ip phone :)
Great post, I tried everyhting on it but it didn't work at first. You need to make sure you enable the "power pre-std-detect" on the switch throught the CLI. After that it came up right away
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