Friday, February 26, 2010

Linksys Managed Switches - Console Port

I had to set up a Linksys SRW2048 switch recently. It's a 48 port gigabit layer 2 switch. It's primarily web managed, but there is a limited CLI.

Anyway, the console port did not appear to be a standard pinout. I opened the RJ45 to DB9 connector they provided, and discovered it has this pinout:

Pin 1Pin 2Pin 3Pin 4Pin 5Pin 6Pin 7Pin 8Pin 9
xblackyellowbrownred (+green)orangewhitebluex


This is the same as the pinout as I used for the type "A" RJ45-DB9 connector in this article: here.

From my testing, you simply need to make two of the type "A" adapters I mentioned in the linked post, attach a cat5 cable to both ends, and you should be able to connect to the serial port. The Linksys uses 38400 baud - unlike the usual 9600.