Standard Access Lists – CCNA Course
Standard IP access lists filter network traffic by examining the source IP address in a packet. You create a standard IP access list by using the access-list numbers 19 or…
Introduction to Access Lists
An Access list is essentially a list of conditions that categorize packets. They can really help when you need to exercise control over network traffic. An access list would be…
Configuring VLAN Trunking Protocol (VTP)
All Cisco switches are configured to be VTP servers by default. To configure VTP, first, you have to configure the domain name you want to use. And of course, once…
Configuring voice VLANs – CCNA Course
The voice VLAN feature enables access ports to carry IP voice traffic from an IP phone. When a switch is connected to a Cisco IP phone, the IP phone sends…
Configuring Inter-VLAN Routing
By default, only hosts that are members of the same VLAN can communicate. To change this and allow inter-VLAN communication, you need a router or a layer 3 switch. I’m…
Configuring Virtual Local Area Networks (VLANs)
It may come as surprise to you, but configuring VLANs is actually pretty easy. Figuring out which users you want in each VLAN is not; it’s extremely time-consuming. But once…
VLAN Identification Methods – CCNA Course
Most of the time, VLANs are created by a sys admin who proceeds to assign switch ports to each VLAN. VLANs of this type are known as static VLANs. If…
Introduction to Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN)
The following figure shows how layer 2 switched networks are typically designed as flat networks. With this configuration, every broadcast packet transmitted is seen by every device on the network…
Troubleshooting Basic Switch Connectivity – CCNA Course
As always, when troubleshooting connectivity issues, use a layered approach and eliminate possibilities at each layer to home in on the possible cause of the problem. Over time, you will…
Enhancements to Spanning Tree Protocol (STP)
The 802.1d spanning tree protocol was created with very few design flaws; however, as with most great things, there is always room for improvement. The biggest grievance the networking community…
Initial Switch Configurations – CCNA Course
Catalyst switches, for the most part, are designed so that the default state of the switch allows for basic layer 2 functionality without requiring any configuration from the administrator. For…
Layer 2 Switching and Spanning Tree Protocol (STP)
We already have an article “Datalink networking concepts”, that you can use bridges and switches to segment a LAN into smaller collision domains. This article looks in close detail at…
EIGRP Configuration – CCNA Course
One of the greatest aspects of EIGRP is that you get all this advanced functionality with minimal configuration effort. EIGRP essentially follows the same configuration guidelines as RIPv2. Namely, it…
Balanced Hybrid operations – CCNA Course
Balanced hybrid routing protocols are sometimes called advanced distance vector routing protocols. The rationale behind this logic is that these routing protocols use similar metrics and have a maximum hop…