Linksys/Cisco Small Business SRW-Series (ie SRW248G4) - Overcoming the Limitations
- by Warren P
We just purchased a Cisco/Linksys SRW 248G4 switch to try it out. We have always had unmanaged switches before, and this is our first "somewhat managed" switch.
So far the major limitations are:
Only Internet Explorer 6 (manual says IE 5.5!) works for the web interface
SSH exists but is not practically useable because the only key length that is supported is no longer even used by most modern SSH installs. (I get the error "RSA modulus too small" in openssh 4.x/5.x)
This is with the latest firmware revision, I believe, although Cisco's website does not actually tell you what version you're downloading. All in all, I think, they must be trying to tell me that if I want a good-quality switch, I shouldn't buy these SRWs and should buy a Dell or an HP ProCurve, or save up my pennies, and buy a Catalyst.
The question here, then, at long last:
Has anyone gotten the web-browser to work via some IE 7 or IE 8 compatibility mode settings or used another browser (Opera? KDE/Safari/WebKit?) and spoofed IE6?
Is there any way to get the SSH key length upgraded? I'm guessing a 0% chance of a yes on that last one.
I found an XP machine, used telnet (via PuttyTel.exe) and IE6 to set this up, and I doubt we'll have to touch it again. Which is fine with us. But it would be nice if I could administer this thing from either (a) a linux box, or (b) my primary desktop which is windows 7. It looks like XPMode with IE6 on the virtual XP machine may be my only way to administer this type of switch via the web.
