Cisco Packet Tracer for Beginners

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

INSTALLING CISCO PACKET TRACER

STARTUP GUIDE

SUBNETTING

COMMAND LINE MODES ON CISCO ROUTER AND SWITCH

BASIC CONFIGURATION OF CISCO ROUTER AND SWITCH

CONFIGURING PASSWORDS ON CISCO ROUTER AND SWITCH

ENCRYPTING PASSWORDS ON CISCO ROUTER AND SWITCH

ENABLING SSH ON CISCO  ROUTER AND  SWITCH

CONFIGURING ETHERCHANNEL ON CISCO SWITCH

STATIC VLAN ON A CISCO SWITCH

CONCLUSION

INTRODUCTION

Cisco Certified Network Associate certification has become must for anybody who wants to have a career in networking. This certification validates that you have the ability to install, configure and troubleshoot a network. You need a lot of practice for achieving success in this exam. Apart from the labs where you are getting trained for CCNA, what if you had a chance to practice at home. Or what if you want to self learn for CCNA? Well for both of the questions above, Cisco Packet Tracer is the perfect answer. To quote from Cisco's official website, Packet tracer is

a powerful network simulation program that allows students to experiment with network behaviour and ask what if questions.

It further says,

The simulation-based learning environment helps students develop 21st century skills such as decision making, creative and critical thinking, and problem solving. Packet Tracer complements the Networking Academy curricula, allowing instructors to easily teach and demonstrate complex technical concepts and networking systems design.

Nothing could have defined that better. The biggest problem in learning networking is the need for multiple devices that from a network. Cisco Packet Tracer removes that hurdle altogether and that too simply. Although there are other network simulation programs ( say GNS3 ), they need device images. Packet tracer has them inbuilt.

This software is available for free from Cisco's website provided you are a registered Networking Academy student, alumni, instructor, or administrator. Even if you are not one among the above you could still get hold of this software. Just google it. Downloading is your part.

Remember that this book is useful to get a hold on Cisco Packet Tracer and how to use it to simulate some real world networking scenarios. This definitely is not the book if you want a shortcut to pass CCNA exam.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The author