The default IP address for a brand new Brocade switch is 10.77.77.77. The netmask is 255.255.255.0.
Imagine you are about to configure a brand new Brocade switch. You get the switch out of its box, rack it, then attempt to connect to the switch using the cable that shipped with the switch (shown in the plastic bag on the left in the picture below). That cable has an RJ-45 Ethernet adapter on one end and a female DB9 serial connection on the other.
The RJ-45 connection is meant to go into the Brocade RJ-45 serial port on the left in the picture below.
The DB9 connector on the cable is meant to connect to your computer.
Last week I was at a client site trying to connect to a Brocade switch using the cable that shipped with the switch. I thought I was prepared to do so. My laptop didn’t have a DB9 serial connection, so I brought a DB9-to-USB converter so I could connect to the switch through one of my laptop’s USB ports. It didn’t work.
After some initial panic, I borrowed a crossover ethernet cable from the client. I connected one end of the cable to the 10/100 Mbps Ethernet (RJ-45) port on the switch (that port is the one on the right side of the picture above). The default IP address of the port is 10.77.77.77 and the netmask is 255.255.255.0.
I then connected the other side to the ethernet port of my laptop and configured my laptop’s ethernet adapter to have an IP address of 10.77.77.50 with a 255.0.0.0 netmask. The correct netmask was actually 255.255.255.0, but despite my little error, I was able to connect successfully (see below).
I opened a terminal window (command window in Windows) and pinged 10.77.77.77. It replied (Yes!).
I then used a putty client (downloadable from putty.org) to ssh to the 10.77.77.77 address. When prompted for a username/password, I used the default username and password for a Brocade switch, which are ‘admin’ and ‘password’.
If you ever need to connect to a new Brocade switch through its ethernet port, just follow the steps above (minus the incorrect netmask). You should be able to connect with no problem.