I replaced an aging SMC 10/100 switch this weekend with a 7-year old Cisco Catalyst WS-C2960S-TS24-S switch that does 10/100/1000. The switch was easily returned to default settings by holding the mode button for 10 seconds; however, the web UI is then turned off by default. The web UI is enabled through the switch set up program, which required my MacBook Pro to make a direct connection to the switch console port using a USB cable. Previously, I would have relied on the ever-trusty ZTerm, but its not currently compatible with Catalina.

The following steps allowed Terminal.app and screen to make a direct connection to the Cisco switch:

Last login: Mon May 18 08:51:17 on console
brad@MacBook-Pro ~ % cd /dev
brad@MacBook-Pro /dev % ls –ltr *usb*
ls: –ltr: No such file or directory
cu.usbmodem14101 tty.usbmodem14101
brad@MacBook-Pro /dev % screen tty.usbmodem14101 9600

After making the connection with screen, I was able to run through the setup process with these instructions to configure Vlan1 port with an IP address of 10.0.1.2 and finally reach the web UI on my network.