HOW TO CONFIGURE THE CISCO SWITCH

What Will I Learn?

In this tutorial you will learn

1. how to Setup the switch hostname
2. Logon Banner
3. how to Setup a password for Console and Telnet
4. Save configuration

Requirements

1. A basic knowledge with Cisco packet tracer.
2. Know the different modes in a cisco device

Difficulty

• Basic

Tutorial Contents

In this tutorial, I will be making use of cisco packet tracer. You can have access to this by enrolling in the cisco network academy. If you have access to a physical switch, then you can still continue with this tutorial.

STEP 1: HOST NAME

On the cisco application select network device and pull out a cisco switch device to the workspace. Click on the device and go to the CLI window. At this point we can begin our configuration
In other to change the hostname of the switch which would be necessary when we start telnetting and also for easier identification for a growing network. We go into the global configuration mode. Simply enter
the commands below:

1. Switch>enable -- this is the user exec mode
2. Switch#configure terminal --privilege exec mode
3. Switch(config)#Host name --global configuration mode

In the above diagram, I have change my switch to SwitchNewName.
Remember: The first mode you enter is the user exec mode which looks like this switch>and the priviledge mode which is the second mode will look like this switch#.

STEP 2: LOGON BANNER
If you ever have connected to a configured switch before, you would probably run into a message before you are presented with the command line interface. That welcome message is called message of the day (motd). This is usually set to tell whoever is trying to configure the switch what is needed to know. Still on the global configuration mode on your cisco packet tracer, enter the command below;

SwitchNewName(config)#banner motd * *

REMEMBER:SwitchNewName is the name of my switch.

STEP 3: CONSOLE PASSWORD
It necessary to lock your devices to prevent unauthorized entry. We need to lock our switch to prevent anyone from just getting into our switch and changing our settings. The lock is executed after the motd is displayed. To do this we get into configuration mode again, enter the following commands below;
…
SwitchNewName(config)#line console 0 --there is only 1 console
SwitchNewName(config-line)#password
SwitchNewName(config-line)#login --tells the device to check for password

I’ll be using cisco as my password.

You will get this screen when you start the device

STEP 4:TELNET PASSWORD
We know that the switch is a layer 2 deviceand does not work with IP addresses rather MAC addresses. In other to telnet to other switches, we would require an IP address but this time with the VLAN. This would be discussed in the next tutorial. Assuming vlan was set up you use this command below
SwitchNewName(config)#line vty 0 15 --there are 16 ports on the switch, we lock all
SwitchNewName(config-line)#password
SwitchNewName(config-line)#login

REMEMBER: Telnet is a virtual line.

STEP 5: SAVE CONFIGURATION
After several configurations, you’ll need to save your work. We have the start up configuration sits on the NVRAM and the running configuration that sit on the RAM. What ever you do on the running configuration does not save if you shutdown. So we save your configuration to the NVRAM so that on next boot it loads up the config. So in your privilege mode (enter exit to get there).
SwitchNewName#copy start run -- this would copy to the NVRAM

NOTE:Do not do COPY START TO RUN. This will loose all the start up config files

Curriculum

This is my first tutorial of this series. Expect more to come.

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Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors

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