Networks Analyzed @ Netralized

With this article I will go you through the configuration of enabling the web interface of your router.

Before showing you the commands, that are quite simple, I will explain what we will achieve with them.

Enabling an HTTP server on the router allowing the administrator by using any web browser to configure the router by pointing to the IP address of the server.

Syntax of the Commands:

Router(config)#ip http server

Now if you wish to enable the web interface in a non default port (The default port is 80) you can use the following command:

Router(config)#ip http port [port number]

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In this article I will give you three useful commands for setting up your router’s clock.

If you are wondering why the router’s clock is important, just think the syslog messages. Every syslog message has the time that the event occurred. Imagine a hacking attempt that has been tracked by your syslog, if the clock of your router is not configured properly, you can’t find out when the attack took place.

Now let’s start with the commands.

Clock set

Clock set hh:mm:ss day month year

This command manually sets the router’s clock. The time is specified in terms of a 24 hour clock and the year must be in a four digit notation for example 2000.

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In this article I will show you how to configure an Ip address and a default gateway in your manageable switch.

But first things first,

Why is an Ip address and default gateway needed in the switch?

After all switches are OSI Layer 2 devices that care only about MAC addresses.

The modern switches are manageable and support extra features than normal old fashion switches. This features include the support of TCP/IP applications like ping, telnet, trace route etc. For example, if you want to telnet or ping a switch, the switch must have an Ip configured. Also, if you want to execute ping or telnet to a device in another subnet the switch must have a default gateway configured.

Now let’s see the configuration for a 2950 series cisco switch.

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In my previous article: Using SSH Instead of Telnet I gave you an overview why you must use SSH instead of telnet. In this article I will show you how to configure a router as an SSH server. Keep in mind that you will need an SSH client to connect to the server. Popular SSH clients are Teraterm, Putty and OpenSSH.

Before configuring SSH, verify that you have configure your router as AAA server with local authentication and you have set all the appropriate usernames and passwords

Here is the configuration:

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Configuring the passwords of your network device is the first step to achieve security.

How do we do this?

In Cisco devices we have four different basic types of passwords;

1. enable password
2. secret password
3. telnet password
4. console password

Now let’s analyze them.

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When you have access to a Cisco network device; for example a router, in your console interface appears the host name of the device and the prompt. It looks like that:

In the image above the Hostname of the device is RouterA and the prompt is >.

This prompt means that you are in user mode and you can perform only few commands.

If you are wandering which commands you can perform, just type the symbol of the question mark “?”. When you type a question mark, that means help, the device shows you all the available commands that you can use in this mode.

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I was thinking to write about DSL, VPN, ACLs and other configurations on cisco devices. But first things first, it’s important to know about the operating system of cisco network devices.

IOS (Internetworking Operating System) is the operating system that cisco devices use. IOS belongs to CLI (Command Line Interface) category of operating systems; this means that the administrator has to write commands in order to perform different tasks on the device. Note that some Catalyst network devices use the CATOS operating system, which is also a cisco software product and a CLI operating system.

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To start working with a Cisco device you need to access it somehow. You can configure it via the console port or via telnet.

1. For accessing the network device by using the console port you will need a rollover cable that normally gives you a serial edge and an RJ-45 edge.

Attach the serial edge of the cable, to the serial port of your PC or laptop and the

RJ-45 edge to the console port of the cisco network device.

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When I start or finish a CCNA course I ask my students what they would like to know about the CCNA exam. Always there is some information that they would like to know but never thought to ask. So giving you all the necessary guidelines about the exam from the questions that the attendants of my courses had during my lectures about CCNA, would be a great idea!

First you can schedule to take the CCNA exam in every cisco certified learning center in your area. For more information, check the “Link” and then click “Academy and Class Search”. The exam has 50 to 60 questions and the participants have 90 minutes to answer them. All the examination process takes place in front of a Computer using a web interface. This might be a little bit tricky especially if this is your first time taking the exam. Getting familiarized with the interface will help a lot; some exam simulators can help you achieve that. Be careful because when you answer a question, the button that takes you to the next question becomes active; if you left click it will take you to the next question but you can’t go back to the previous one, so you have to be sure about your answer before moving forward to the next one.

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Cisco systems has announced changes in the course material and the certification path of the CCNA exam.

First of all, the CCNA exam was constituted from two different courses INTRO and ICND. Now, Cisco has replaced the INTRO (32 hours) course with ICND 1 (40 hours) course and the ICND has been replaced by ICND 2 (40 hours) course.

The course materials and the changes - or should I say the updates that Cisco made - are: ICND 1 has almost the same topics with INTRO. Exception is Module 3 that is an introduction of wireless networking.

In the list below you can see analytically all the topics of ICND 1.

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