How to Onboard a New Gateway with Plug & Connect – Endian

Applies to Platform: Endian Connect Switchboard 6.0
Updated on: 16th of December 2026

This article describes how to easily onboard a new gateway using Plug & Connect. This feature allows an administrator to deploy (provision) a new gateway over the Internet to an existing Switchboard installation.

How Plug & Connect Works

The Plug & Connect procedure works in three basic steps:

Run the Plug & Connect wizard on the Switchboard for the new gateway.
Plug in power and Internet (using DHCP) to the gateway that meets requirements below.
The gateway should retrieve it's Plug & Connect configuration, come online and connect to the Switchboard.

Prerequisites

An existing Switchboard 6.0 installation that is registered to Endian Network.
An Endian gateway device that you want to add to the Switchboard.
A valid Activation Code for the device, which is typically in the form 12345-23456-34567-45678-56789 (i.e., 25-characters long).

Before starting the actual procedure, make sure that your Endian gateway device:

has not been registered to Endian Network,
can connect to the Internet and freely access the websites network.endian.com and registry.endian.com during the procedure,
is allowed to communicate through port TCP/443,
receives an automatic IP address through DHCP
can connect to the public FQDN or IP address of the Switchboard,
has the factory default configuration
is powered off.

Switchboard Setup

Before we can begin the Plug & Connect procedure, we must ensure the Switchboard has Endian Network credentials to properly provision the gateway and is configured to send gateway configuration to the online registry. There are multiple ways to provide the Endian Network credentials:

At the user level so each user can have his/her own Endian Network credentials
At the organization level (for multi-tenant Switchboards)
Globally across the entire Switchboard

For this demonstration, we will set the credentials globally under Switchboard > Settings > Provisioning

Enable gateways provisioning: This should be checked
Send provisioning to the registry: This should be checked to use the Plug & Connect feature
Endian Network account: The Endian Network account username
Endian Network password or registration key: The Endian Network account username

Plug & Connect Procedure

To begin the Plug & Connect procedure, go to Switchboard > Dashboard > Gateways and click the Plug & Connect (autoregistration) button:

Enter the activation code of the gateway in the first step. Click Next to continue.

In the next screen, enter the following details:

Device name: Enter a name for the gateway to be used on the Switchboard
Description (optional): Enter a description for this gateway
Admin (Web user) Password: Enter a strong password to set on this gateway
Use the same password for admin (Web) and root (SSH): Here you can choose to use the same password or set separate passwords for each access interface.

Click Next to continue.

Ensure you have an Ethernet cable connected to the WAN port which provides DHCP and meets the prerequisites described above.

Click Continue once this is done.

Now you are ready to connect the power supply to the gateway to power on the device.

Click Continue once this is done.

Once you connect the power cord the device starts booting, a new page appears, asking to boot up the remote device. Do so, then click once more on the Continue button. Now, wait for the device to complete the boot-up sequence, which may take a few minutes.

While the Switchboard tries to establish the connection, you will be able to follow the process. The progress or any error messages are shown on the Switchboard's GUI. After a few minutes you will see an overlay like the following one. Click on either Edit gateway to configure the device or on Connect to gateway to use an application and directly connect to it.

To confirm on the Switchboard, you will see a confirmation on the Switchboard > Devices > Gateways page under the Provisioning column.

And on the Dashboard > Connection page you will see the new gateway as well.

Troubleshooting

This sections describes some common point of failure that you can encounter during the Plug and Connect procedure.

Appliance disconnected or network failure

If for any reason no communication can be set up between the Switchboard and the device, you will see an error message like the one below.

In this case, make sure that the device has been turned on, and that can access the web sites network.endian.com and registry.endian.com, as well as the FQDN or public IP address of the Switchboard.

Make sure that the device can boot up correctly, by e.g., start it and verify that you can see the dashboard using a browser.

Check also that there is no firewall in the local network where the device is located that blocks traffic from and to port TCP 443 of the device.

VPN Timeout or other Timeout

In case some VPN Timeout error is displayed, the VPN tunnel could not be successfully established. The reasons for this to occur are different and require different approaches. As a rule of thumb, the first thing to check is if the OpenVPN server is running correctly on the switchboard, otherwise check the client's connectivity.

In case you receive a generic Timeout error, it is also possible that although the VPN has been established, the registration of the device to the switchboard was not successful. In this case, verify the network connection and try the procedure again.