Cisco Switch and Router: Commands and Steps to Configure

Type Of Switch.

We will analyze a very important issue in our role of network administrators of any organization, regardless of the size of the organization, and is the way we have configured our switches and routers, in case our organization has these devices within their infrastructure . A correct configuration provides us with security, correct communication between the devices and without doubt a stable network.

A switch, also known as a switch, is responsible for deriving the data to each target device; Basically the switch is responsible for analyzing and evaluating the incoming frames on their input ports and filters them to work only on the correct ports.

There are several forms of design or structure in the switch , we will see a brief summary:

Fixed Configuration Switch

They are those that do not allow some type of update, we can only work with the factory default settings.

Modular Switch

They allow adding and configuring new features, such as adding ports etc.

Stack able Switch

Allows inter connectivity between one or more switches .

Switches need to have special features to make the most of our hierarchical structure such as VLAN, Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, link assignment, among others, so for example port security lets you determine how many and which devices will be allowed to connect to the switch .

There are a lot of terms with which we must familiarize ourselves with working with our switches, we analyze some of these details to have a clear concept:

Uni cast

It is one where a device sends a frame to a specific destination.

Broadcast

It is one where a frame is sent from an emitter to several devices.

Multicast

It is one where a frame is sent to a specific group of clients or devices.

Note: We understand that frame is a data packet.

MAC Address

It is a binary value of 48 bytes and is composed of two parts, all the devices in our network that are connected have an interface with MAC addresses.

Half duplex

It is a data flow of a unidirectional character, that is to say, it is only allowed in one direction, for example, a radio, where only one person can speak at the time

Full Duplex

The data flow is bidirectional, or both ways, it improves the performance of our network.

Note: The ports of our switch must be set to Duplex mode depending on the media type to use.

Network latency

It is the total time it takes a frame or packet from the source to the destination host.

There are many other terms and concepts that should be treated or analyzed in a Networking tutorial as it covers quite a few terms.

General Recommendation About Switch.

We must take care when configuring our switches, these are:

• Check that all the network cables are connected.
• The host is connected to the console port.
• Verify that Hyper terminal is working properly.
• Verify that the switch start is correct (POST).

Remember that through a correct configuration of our devices we will have more valuable results.

Note

CISCO's Packet Tracer tool is perfect for performing our simulations and implementing each of the switches commands.