Posted by Internet at Every Where on 9:36 AM
Configure Router as DHCP Server for VLANsNow this part of configuration is the most fun part of all. I just love the way that one router accepts requests from clients on different VLANs (with different subnets), and the router gives away the addresses based on what VLAN a client resides.That's just cool, your average home usage routers can't do this kind of stuff, most of the average home usage routers can do is just give away IP addresses for one network.At the previous post, I posted about how to make a router to be DHCP server. Now this post is similar but I'm going to make the router to give away IP addresses for clients on different networks.The configuration is also the same, but now I'm going to make several IP DHCP pool. The amazing thing is that the router can differentiate each client...
Posted by Internet at Every Where on 5:49 PM
Configure Router for InterVLAN routingIf you only configure VLAN on the 2950 or other layer 2 switches, the clients can only communicate with other clients within the same VLAN.If you want them to be able to communicate with other clients on different VLANs, then you need to configure a router for interVLAN routing.Configuration of router for interVLAN routing often called router on a stick. The reason is the clients that want to communicate with other clients on different VLANs need to go through the router first and the router will route the packets to the appropriate VLANs back through the same line.The disadvantage of this is that single...
Posted by Internet at Every Where on 9:24 PM
Assigning Switch Ports to VLANsAfter configuring VLANs on Cisco switch, now we need to assign the switch ports to VLANs.We need to assign which ports should be in which VLAN, remember VLAN = broadcast domain = subnet.So before making your own VLANs, consider the IP addressing scheme and which computer should be in which broadcast domain or network.Next step is to configure the trunk port to connect to the router and access port to connect the switch ports to our clients' PCs or other network devices.The trunk port is needed to carry all VLANs or selected VLANs (you can decide which VLANs are allowed to cross the trunk link) in one port and the native VLAN is assigned to "tag" untagged frames with the ID of the native VLAN.You should also configure trunk if you want to connect a switch to another...
Posted by Internet at Every Where on 6:31 PM
Configuring VLANsI'll start the configuration of adding switch to my Cisco home lab by configuring the switch first. At the previous tutorial series, I posted about how to connect Cisco router to cable internet, and now here's how the network will look like again when added a switch to it:The network will have 4 VLANs, with the VLAN 5 acting as the native VLAN.By default, the native VLAN of Cisco switches is VLAN 1, you might want to change the native VLAN from VLAN 1 to other VLAN since there a security concern about this.You can read a nice article about native VLAN security concern from cisco.In 2950 switches, you have to type in these commands...
Posted by Internet at Every Where on 2:10 PM
You know my old saying... "Connect on your similarities and profit from your differences" One of the best places to practice that -- if you are a progressive, technical, social, global/local thinker is at the annual Pop!Tech conference held in Camden, Maine every October. Can't remember how many people I met -- many more than the biz cards I collected. They were ALL interesting, if not outright fascinating, each in their own way!Andrew Zolli, who is the conference curator, is a master network weaver -- connecting others through placement in the program or F2F introductions. You want to connect to Andrew, he will close many triangles for you.THE...
Posted by Internet at Every Where on 8:52 AM
So I was sitting and thinking about what to post next in my blog, and hey why not continuing on the last posts about setting up Cisco home lab.The network topology might not be the best topology for CCNA home lab, but the configuration should be similar with any other topologies.Let's take a look at the last network topology where I connected 2611 router to the cable internet:I'm going to add a Cisco switch, 2950 Cisco switch that is. And I'll be adding some VLANs to it, I'll separate the PCs in my LAN into four different networks.VLAN 5 as the native VLAN - 192.168.5.0 networkVLAN 10 for the office - 192.168.10.0 networkVLAN 20 for the home...
Posted by Internet at Every Where on 4:57 AM
After building my own Cisco home lab, I feel very satisfied with how they perform for my LAN.So let me poison your mind, I'm going to show you why I think home network geeks - like my self - and SOHO network should consider to replace the network devices they have now with Cisco networking devices.Actually Cisco has an article called Why Enterprise Choose Cisco, but frankly I don't quite understand what they're trying to say so I figured 7 reasons that I can think of why choose Cisco for Home or SOHO network.1. Cisco CertificationThe number one reason is of course to smooth your way in passing Cisco Certification exams. You can get away not having...
Posted by Internet at Every Where on 5:18 AM
When you've set up your Cisco devices, you might also want to monitor them. It's very inconvenient if you have to look at the lights blinking on your Cisco devices or logging to the devices and type in show ip interface brief just to see if the interfaces is running correctly.To make monitoring network devices easier, the great people in network industry invented SNMP or Simple Network Management Protocol).SNMP gives you great flexibility, you can allow a group of people to just monitor the network devices in your LAN (read-only rights) and allow other group for monitoring and making changes to the network devices (read-write rights).The image...
Posted by Internet at Every Where on 6:39 PM
So you haven't decided yet to take the Cisco CCNA exam, no time to study, too much works got in the way, etc.Well I found something that might raise your spirit again in taking the CCNA exam.First, why bother taking the exam? According to indeed.com the percentage of job vacancies in need of CCNA certified people have been growing wild in the last few years.They search from millions of jobs from thousands of job sites about the CCNA required jobs, you can see from the graphic of indeed.com below:From the looks of that chart, 50 plus percent growth of jobs in need for CCNA, WOW , the demand for CCNA certified are definitely won't run out in the...
Posted by Internet at Every Where on 5:58 PM
Configuring NAT (Network Address Translation)Continuing for the tutorial series of configuring Cisco router to work with cable internet, now we'll set the router to do NAT.When connecting your router to the cable internet through cable modem, your router will receive a dynamic IP address from the ISP DHCP server according to the scenario.While you only get one IP address from the ISP, you also need to connect more than one computer to the internet.Plus the public IP address is different network with the private IP addresses in your LAN.NAT can solve this problem, it stores the requesting private IP addresses in the address translation table of...
Posted by Internet at Every Where on 8:01 AM
Setting Cisco Router as DHCP ServerThis option really is optional if you want to set Cisco router to work with cable internet, but this is a good chance to add your skill in configuring Cisco devices.From the previous post, you know how to configure your router's interface to accept IP address from DHCP server.Now it's time to configure your router as DHCP server.Once again you need to make sure your Router IOS image support the DHCP server feature if not then the command won't be available.To set a DHCP server, you will configure a pool of network IP addresses that you want to give out to the clients (PC, printer, NAS, etc).As shown on the image in the previous post, I want to give out the IP addresses from the network 192.168.1.0.First thing you need to configure is to exclude the IP addresses...
Posted by Internet at Every Where on 6:44 AM
Setting IP Address to Cisco Router's InterfacesWe need to first set the IP address of the router's interfaces to begin configuring Cisco router to work with cable internet.If you configure the router for the first time, connect to it using the console cable.WARNING!!!Not every Cisco IOS image supports the commands below, make sure your router's IOS support the commands, please read here first. If your image doesn't support it, the commands wont work.Or check the features of your IOS image here.Make sure your Cisco IOS image supports DHCP features (client/server).As I said in the last post, the interface ethernet 0/0 is connected to the cable...
Posted by Internet at Every Where on 7:01 AM
If you just bought your first used Cisco router, I bet one thing you want to immediately do is connecting the Cisco router to the cable internet.I know I did, I have cable internet for my home network. Previously I used Linksys router to get my LAN connected to the internet.Configuring Cisco router to connect to the cable internet is easy work, even if you know only the basic configuration stuff in Cisco.I need to warn you that this configuration will be in series or else this configuration will be a very long post. And also this series will be a good chance to learn some aspects in configuring Cisco router.All you need to do is to set the IP...
Posted by Internet at Every Where on 10:37 PM
Ah, nothing like a long holiday for a tired mind, now back to blogging.During my vacation I also took my chance browsing all over the internet, I'm surprise to see that in the internet, quite a lot of people claiming that Cisco.com didn't give them enough information about the devices in their home labs.Sure Cisco did stop supporting some of the older devices, but they still keep the information about them including the configuration examples, etc. But maybe they did stop posting the information.That's not what I want to post about now, just sharing my opinion. But I do want to post about some resources that provide you with the information about...
Posted by Internet at Every Where on 7:13 AM
"Respect. Empower. Include."Sounds like the mantra of a network weaver. Those three words come from the Obama campaign, from the the "Neighborhood Team Leader" concept as described in the Huffington Post.Basic closing of local triangles...Her team would be responsible for connecting with all of the Democratic and undecided voters within their "turf." The strategy is not to have one central organizing point, like old campaigns, but to have multiple weavers working in concert -- each organizes their local geography/social circle. The natural evolution of "friends talking to friends", ...or at least acquaintances who are highly similar.Our house...
Posted by Internet at Every Where on 9:50 PM
When you decided to buy Cisco devices for a home lab, it is very important to ask the reseller about the Cisco IOS image the devices are using.This is something that most newbies are forgetting about when buying used Cisco devices for the first time.This should be no problem if you buy Cisco kit/home lab package, since the reseller will optimize the requirements for you, including the IOS version.Now what exactly is the differences in Cisco IOS package names and the features they have. To list every one of them here is a very tiring work since there might be hundreds if not thousands of IOS packages with different versions and features.What I...
Posted by Internet at Every Where on 1:34 AM
If you buy used Cisco device for your Cisco home lab, your used router/switch configuration most likely already erased to default configuration by the reseller. But what if you got a router/switch with password in it, or you forgot the password you gave to the device.Cisco devices have a password recovery procedure that you can use to overcome this problem, some devices might have different procedure for password recovery.The steps that I'm showing here is for Cisco 2600 and 2800 series routers, but most routers have the common steps to follow.Some Cisco switches series have a button on the chassis that you must press for password recovery.WARNING!!!The...
Posted by Internet at Every Where on 10:26 PM
There are many articles about how to recover or upgrade your Cisco IOS, but personally I find that using tftpdnld is the fastest and easiest way to do this.tftpdnld is a command that you can use in the ROMmon mode of Cisco devices.Using tftpdnld you can download files directly to the Cisco routers or switches from ROMmon mode using the console cable (serial connection).In order to use the tftpdnld command you need a TFTP server running in your computer, any TFTP server will do.In this example I recover my Cisco IOS image for my 2611 router, but this tutorial also good for 2800 and 3800 series routers.I need to tell you that you can use tftpdnld...
Posted by Internet at Every Where on 8:21 AM
TFTP or Trivial File Transfer Protocol can be a very useful network management tool. Although it's a simplified version of FTP, but because of that simplicity it wins the heart of all network engineers.You can use TFTP server for numerous purposes when relating it with network devices.You can use it for uploading or downloading Cisco IOS or other network vendors' operating systems, backup configuration files, or even run firmwares or operating system over the network for IP Phones, network devices, etc. without storing them in the devices.I think most if not all of the professionally managed networks are definitely using TFTP servers.I quoted...
Posted by Internet at Every Where on 3:17 AM
One time in a project, I worked on Cisco Catalyst 6500 series, it's one of the biggest switches you can find in the market, not to mention very expensive too.The thing is it was using CatOS instead of IOS, the client only want to use IOS. CatOS is another flavor of Cisco Operating System which uses a set based commands. Meaning when you want to configure something the command usually use "set" as the first command.So I upgraded the image to IOS, I had to change several switches since they were using quite a lot of those switches.Then the problem came, one of the switches stuck in the ROMMON mode. It's not showing the normal switch > prompt but only the rommon 1 > prompt.This is not a serious problem, I only forgot to change back the configuration register value.You might have experienced...
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