Configuring Devices

Placing Devices

Let's look at a few of the basic configurations for a few of the devices here on Packet Tracer. The first thing we're going to do is place a few devices in our working logical map here. In our working area right here, I'm first of all going to select network devices and routers, and then I'm going to put a 2911 out here, and we're going to take a look at the 2911. Another thing that we're going to want is a switch, so maybe we'll do a 2960 from a switch perspective. And then maybe an end device, so let's do a PC. Let's go ahead and pull a PC up there.

From a configuration standpoint, all we really need to do is click these devices and it will open them up, so I can click any one of these devices and see the configuration for those devices.

The Router

Let's take a look at this 2911 first, so I'm going to open it up. The tabs across the top are: physically how it's configured, we have a config with this, we have a command line interface, and then some attributes that we can set.

This physical configuration is if we want to configure this. What we can see in this router is we've got some blank spots here that we could actually slide in some of these modules, so if we wanted to add some functionality. This is the way a real router would work: we could go out and buy one of these modules and slide it into one of these slots to give it additional functionality. Of course, we need to turn it off in order to do this — we wouldn't want to slide it in when it's live. So I'd turn this off. If I don't turn it off first, then what it'll do is give me a little warning right here.

So I'm going to power this off, and then I'll drag — maybe I want the HWIC-2T, so this is some serial interfaces here, and I can connect things from one device to another. I could slide that in there. Or perhaps I want some Gigabit Ethernet, so then I could choose one of these Gigabit Ethernet and put it in there. And this one is a small form pluggable that I have there. So I choose the different devices that I would want to slide in here and configure it, and then once I've got it configured the way I want, then I could turn it on and get it started.

The Command Line Interface

If we wanted to see the startup process, I could hit the command line interface, and it actually goes through the startup process, which is something we would see if we were consoled into this, except it goes a lot faster.

In this command line I can actually use my commands here, so all I need to do is hit enter. I'm now inside this router; it's giving me the prompt here. So what I can do is type in my commands now. Maybe I want to go into enable mode, maybe I want to go into the global configuration mode, so I'll type that in there. And perhaps I want to change the router name, so maybe I'm going to change the host name to R1, and then I hit enter. Now you can see my host name has changed to R1. So I can enter commands into this command line interface.

The Config Tab

I can also hit this config right here, and this shows me some other information that I can configure. I've got things like settings, the algorithm settings, static, RIP if I want to do any kind of routing, VLAN database, and each of the interfaces, and I can configure it right from this interface.

As an example, let's say I want to go from R1 back to router — the name before was router — so I hit enter here, and we can see now it's entered this information in here, the command line down here. So we see right here, host name router.

Ultimately you should be doing most of your commands through this command line interface. However, if you wanted to see certain commands you could come in here, or maybe quickly set something up, you could come in here and start setting things up in here. Same thing here: if I want to save the running config, I can say save for the NV, and it'll go through the process of copy run start, and it saves that.

Something we won't get into too much is the attributes tab, but it is there if we want to change some sort of attributes to this device.

The Switch

If I go into the switch, I see very similar stuff here. I've got the modules on the left-hand side. This particular switch doesn't have any modules that I can drop into it, so I don't have that option with this, but if I would, then I'd have that option. Same thing, I've got the command line interface that I can do the command line on this device. I've got configs, so I can configure certain aspects of it. But for the most part, since you're learning, you really want to do most of your stuff through the command line interface. And then we've got a similar attributes tab right here that we can change some attributes with, but once again, most of the stuff we want to change is right through the command line interface.

The PC

Then we can take a look at the PC and see what the PC looks like. Same thing, we've got the physical tab, the config tab and the attributes tab. Instead of the command line interface, we've got the desktop and programming.

From a module standpoint, we can see the different modules that are installed on here. The configs — we can once again do some configuration changes through here. For instance, the fast ethernet: we can come in and set settings for the fast ethernet. But we may want to take a look at the desktop and change it in here instead, because we can change the NIC settings right here as well, and this mimics a little more what you would actually see on a computer. So this might be a spot to change those types of things.

We do have the terminal, if we want to be able to connect into one of these devices and program those devices that way. And we also have the command prompt, if we want to launch our command prompt and do something like an ipconfig, and so we can see the data there with ipconfig.

What this is really doing is emulating, or simulating, the different programs that you would be using on a PC. So we don't have a typical desktop; it's just showing you all of these programs.