Welcome to this Hands-On Lab video, where I'm going to teach you how to download free software that's
going to allow you to build a practice network topology.
Let's get started.
So I've got some really great news for you.
There is a packet tracer program, you've probably heard of it.
Packet Tracer is an excellent network simulation tool that's available from Cisco.
Now, a lot of people have used packet tracer.
A lot of students have, you know, really ensured they understand networking through living with this
tool.
But they may have been using it illegally for the longest time.
Cisco Packet Tracer was only available for Cisco Networking Academy students.
Notice when we did a Google search on packet tracer, we were brought no surprise to the networking
academy.
The great news though is that the Cisco packet tracer, if you view a course on it, in fact all you
got to do is sign up.
You can then download Cisco packet tracer and use it and you can do so free of charge.
So finally, we can be fully licensed for this tool.
So notice what you're going to do.
You're going to log in to the networking academy and just use your free Cisco Ecom account.
So notice free account to log in to the networking academy and then we're going to get our free packet
tracer notice.
We love free when it comes to our practice labs.
So notice what you're going to do.
You are going to go in and you are going to find this introduction to Packet Tracer course, and you
are going to make sure that you get signed up for that.
And then notice you're going to have done in this ressources area the ability to download packet tracer
notice.
There's a couple of videos that you could definitely watch if you have never used this tool, but I'm
going to give you a crash course in it right now, of course.
But notice there is training videos here.
If you want even more information, notice something else it's great about Package Racer is that there
are Windows versions, Ubuntu versions and Mac OS versions.
So you're going to get plenty of opportunities to run this on whatever device you like.
And again, one of the great things about this, there are certainly other network simulators, but
this one is great in that it's going to be very low resource requirements.
All right.
Well, let's grab this 64 bit packet tracer for Windows.
That will be the appropriate download for my platform.
And notice this is just going to take a moment over my fiber optic internet connection.
That's great.
So let's get this sucker downloaded and installed.
So notice I'll just open the file right from this download window and we will get the installation of
our networking lab environment done.
So it looks like, oh, right, it's just finishing up.
Let's go.
Finish, finish.
All right.
I will pause the video as this is finishing.
Well, all right.
As you can see, the file downloaded and I open that file and we are going to accept the agreement we're
going to install into the default location.
We're going to keep the folder the same name there.
We can create a desktop shortcut and a quick launch shortcut.
That's fine.
Next.
And install.
All right.
So while this is installing a pause video and we're going to be right back.
I won't leave anything behind the curtains.
You'll see everything that we do to build this lab together so you can start building your own.
All right, so we elected to have a shortcut created on the desktop.
There it is.
Let's double click this Cisco packet tracer shortcut.
And you can see that this initial opening screen launches and now what you'll need to do is go ahead
and log in and notice that you're going to have the ability to stay logged in for three months.
This is great.
So we are going to go ahead and sign in.
So we'll just go ahead and click on the Networking Academy sign in button.
And we are going to once again sign in using our Cisco dot com free account.
So once you are signed in, notice what you have here, you have a blank canvas with which to build
a networking topology.
So if I come down here, you can see that there is various network devices and then notice these are
end devices here.
So I can click on the end devices and if I want a PC, I can click on that PC and I can drag it into
the topology.
Now, let's see, there must be a zoom button, right, so we can zoom in.
Yeah, there's the zoom button.
So now I can zoom in and I'll make this nice and big so that you can see it.
So we have a PC.
And what would that PC connect to?
Well, it would certainly connect to a switch.
So if I go to network devices, there's our switches and we can grab this Cisco switch.
It's a 29 6024 port switch and we can drop that into the topology.
Notice you can rename these things.
So I'll call this S.W. one, for example, and I'll call this I don't like PC zero a PC one.
And notice we can now connect these two things together.
So I can grab the straight through copper Ethernet cable and I can connect it to the fast Ethernet port
on the PC, and then I can go ahead and plug that into, for example, fast Ethernet zero four on the
switch and notice these little LED indicators there.
Yes, they are intelligent, so watch this.
When spanning tree protocol on that switch allows that port to truly come up, will see this orange
indicator light will go to the Green Triangle to indicate that interface is now up.
It should take several more seconds and then we should see that switch interface can come up and there
it does.
So those are actually intelligent and led indicators, if you want to think of them that way.
Now, what about the configuration of like the PC?
Well, if you double click it or actually just single click it, you can see the PC and notice there's
this config tab.
And if we go to the fast Ethernet zero interface, you can see that there is the Layer two Mac address
that exists on that network interface card that is in this PC.
And notice there is no IPv4 address, so I could drop one in, do the all ten address there with the
default class, a subnet mask.
But you get the idea.
The actual values I put in there aren't really important right now.
I'm just showing you that's how easy it would be to input a configuration.
So notice now we have the IP configuration in and I can say do an automatically generated IPV six configuration
when I close those windows.
Those changes will be made to that PC.
How about the switch?
Well, clicking on the switch, we can see the physical switch and the physical tab and then the config
window would allow us to go in and look at the configuration that is set up on that fast Internet 0/4
interface that we connected to.
But even more exciting than that is your ability to access the command line interface, the CLP on the
switch, and in fact they even have options now for configuring this view.
So if I go up to file, let's see, it would probably be under one of the preferences here.
Yeah.
Options.
Preferences.
Look at this and we can go to the font and for the font inside the ce ally we can at the very least
blow that font up nice and big.
So let me go to a 20 point font in the C ally.
All right.
So let's see if that actually took effect and look at that.
It did.
So now I can actually my old eyes can see what I am working on here and notice we are at the CLIA of
that switch.
And one of the things that I might want to do is give the switch its proper name of S.W. one.
And of course once we named that switch S.W. one, we can go ahead and save this with a copy running
config to start up config.
And that is how, of course, you save your configuration at the command line interface of a Cisco switch.
So we have gone in renamed the device and we have saved that configuration inside the CLIA.
So I'm sure you would agree this is.
Very, very powerful network simulator.
And remember, we're only scratching the surface of the devices that you have access to and that you
can practice configuring.
And, of course, practice hacking inside of a totally safe sandbox simulated environment.
Thanks so much for watching.