kalyan chinta - Cisco Packet Tracer for Beginners

1. INTRODUCTION
   
2. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
   
3. INSTALLING CISCO PACKET TRACER
   
4. STARTUP GUIDE
   
5. SUBNETTING
   
6. COMMAND LINE MODES ON CISCO ROUTER AND SWITCH
   
7. BASIC CONFIGURATION OF CISCO ROUTER AND SWITCH
   
8. CONFIGURING PASSWORDS ON CISCO ROUTER AND SWITCH
   
9. ENCRYPTING PASSWORDS ON CISCO ROUTER AND SWITCH
   
10. ENABLING SSH ON CISCO ROUTER AND SWITCH
    
11. CONFIGURING ETHERCHANNEL ON CISCO SWITCH
    
12. STATIC VLAN ON A CISCO SWITCH
    
13. CONCLUSION

C isco 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.

T he author of this book Kalyan Chakravarthi Chinta ironically doesn't have any CCNA, A+ or for that matter any other certification in networking. He is a passionate security researcher and freelance cyber security trainer. He has experience both in network security and web security. He also developed a vulnerable web application "Vulnerawa" to help beginners understand web security. He also has a website "www.hackercool.com" dedicated to hacking.

Now you're curious about why a hacker wrote a book about networking. A hacker at any point of time requires networking knowledge. While looking to hack his way to learn networking, he came across the awesome tool. In fact he mastered his networking skills with this tool.

When he is not into hacking, the author is either watching Marvel movies or playing Age Of Empires. By the way, his favourite comic book superhero is Captain America. He is also interested in nature, aliens, conspiracy theories, cryptids, unsolved mysteries and global geo politics.

Please don't forget to leave reviews. Thanking you

O nce you have finished downloading the software, it's time to install it. Let us see how to install Cisco Packet Tracer in Windows and Linux.

1. Windows

Any installation in Windows is just clicks and mouse and the same applies to Packet tracer. Click on the exe file downloaded. The below screen appears. Select "I accept the agreement" and click on "Next" .

S etup will show the folder in which the program's shortcuts will be created. If you want to change the folder, you can change it. Click on "Next" .

T hen the program will ask whether to create a Desktop icon and create a Quick Launch icon. Make your own choice and click on "Next" .

T hen the summary of the settings we selected is displayed. Click on "Install" .

T he installation starts as shown below.

I n seconds, installation gets completed and the below screen is shown. Click on "Finish" .

T hen the below popup appears asking you to close or restart your computer. Click on "OK" .

A s we selected Launch option, Packet tracer is automatically launched. It should look like below.

. Linux

Now let us see how to install Cisco Packet Tracer in Linux. To install Packet Tracer in Linux, we need to download a Debian package of Packet tracer. We will install it in Ubuntu Precise Pangolin (12.04) but the installation process is same for any version of Ubuntu. I have downloaded the .deb file to Desktop as shown below.

O pen a terminal and check the current working directory by typing command " pwd". If the current directory is not desktop move to the Desktop directory using " cd" . After reaching the Desktop directory, type " ls" to see if the packet tracer binary file is there.

L eft click on the packet tracer .bin file displayed after typing " ls" above, the entire word will be selected. Then right click and select copy. Now type " chmod +x" and then hit " CTRL+SHIFT+V "to paste the text we copied above. Our command should look like this.

chmod +x PacketTracer533_i386_installer-deb.bin

This command gives us execution rights on the Packet Tracer binary file.

What chmod +x command does is that it gives all users permission to execute this binary file.