Chapter 7

Build a Routed Network Lab

This was one of the best hands on labs that we did.  The whole setup was very interesting and a great learning experience.  We broke the room into 5 two to three person groups.  Each group was given a router, a switch and a serial cable.

The group’s computers were then hooked via their CAT-5 cables into the switch and the switch was hooked into the router.  Each router was connected to two other routers via the serial cables (unless you were an end point then you were only hooked up to one other router) to form a kind of daisy chain connection.  The basic setup at each group looked something like this:

Only with large blue serial cables attached to the two serial ports in the back of the router (unless like I said earlier you were an end point).

Once the physical setup was completed we were given some basic information, as the instructor had already configured the routers IP Addresses, and asked to figure out our subnets for the computers that were connected to our switches.

From there we used a program called Putty to Telnet into our routers instead of consoling in via cable to the Cisco IOS.

This allowed us to setup and make changes to the router so it would understand what router was talking to it and on what serial port it was talking on.  We were also able to setup the clockrate and change IP Addresses if we wanted to. 

Once all the internal setup was completed we attempted to ping other computers and were able to ping our own but not others on the network.  After some trouble shooting our instructor realized that we were using class C private IP Addresses and so some changes were made and we instituted RIP on the routers and it made it so we were able to ping through the network.