Cisco is one of the leaders in the networking industry, it is of great importance to learn how to configure this devices if you want to work in the IT field.Today we are going to learn some of the basic commands that are required to configure a Cisco Switch.
First we need to be able to identify what are the different modes that a Cisco OS(Operative System) has.
User EXEC mode
The user EXEC mode is the first one that will appear when accessing a Cisco Switch or Router, you will be able to see this mode because it has a > sign:
Example: Switch>
Privileged EXEC mode
The privileged exec mode is the next that will have a Cisco Switch, this level or mode will allow you to have more access to diferents commands and as it names indicates will give you extra privileges that a user exec mode does not have. To recognize when we are in this mode we have to look after the name of the device, and it will be represented by # sign
Example: Switch#
Global Configuration mode
The global configuration mode will give you the access to all the commands that you will require to configure interfaces and important information like passwords and more, the global configuration mode can be recognized by: (config)#
Example: Switch(config)#
we have seen the 3 main user modes that any Cisco device will have, now we are going to see a basic configuration of a switch with all the commands .
Switch> enable –>this will prompt from user exec mode to privileged exec mode
Switch#configure terminal –> Goes from privileged to global config
Switch(config)# hostname SW1 –> This changes the name of the device
SW1(config)# banner motd #Authorized Access only# –> Creates a banner at the login time motd means message of the day.
SW1(config)# no ip domain-lookup –> this prevent the system to look on internet for a bad command that you may have typed
SW1(config)# line console 0 –> enters into console 0 line to configure access for the user exec mode
SW1(config-line)# password cisco –>assigns the password cisco to the line console 0 or used exec mode
SW1(config-line)# login –>this command will require that a user enters a password to login at user exec mode
SW1(config)# enable secret class –>this command will assign the password class to the privileged exec mode, you can use enable password but this will create a plain text password while secret creates a level of encryption.
SW1(config)# service password-encryption –>This command will encrypt all the password in the running configuration so no one can see it.
There are more commands that you can use and more to know, if you want to learn more I will recommend you to watch this video:
