Hey all...thanks to the kindness of this forum, I am just about there! I've got four Hikvision cams (two more coming later), two older Cisco POE switches (SRW208MP), and my PC/DVR all set to go.
If I plug a Hikvision directly into the PC, it works great. But, if I plug it into one of the switches and then run the switch to the PC, I can't see it in SADP. I figured I needed to "manage" the switch, so I got me a serial cable and tried to get into it. WOW...in the owners' manual, I got to "Connecting to a switch through a Telnet session" - it says "open a command line editor and enter 'telnet 192.168.1.254'. Then press the enter key. The Login screen will now appear.
Well, I don't even know what a command line editor is; I did some googling and DLed a Linux command line editor, but that might as well have been in cyrillic. I tried using both Telnet and just a command prompt, and neither worked. I am afraid I am UTTERLY out of my league here; would any of you good folks mind giving me a nudge in the right direction?
I feel like a fool...many, many thanks, all.