Basic Router and Switch Configuration Lab

Last weekend I had my first CCNA laboratory session which consisted of 3 lab activities.The laboratory was meant to take 6 hours but i had a head start having played around with my simulator under similar configuration. I was given 3 cisco routers and 1 switch to play with using the configuration ( at least that is what I was supposed to have by the end of the lab) as shown in the image below:

Basically, the aim of the lab was to configure the three routers by:

• Setting IP addresses
• Giving them Hostnames
• Configuring each routers interface
• Setting passwords
• Banner message of the day e.t.c

It was just a basic lab except I had a slight difficulty when setting password using the “service password-encryption” command but I finally figured it out by :

1. First setting a secret password for the router, using command
   secret password [your password]
2. Set the passwords for a line console, line aux and line vty, using command :
   password [your password]
3. And then finally to do the actual encryption of all the passwords I had to use “service password-encryption” command. I checked the passwords using “show running-config command”.
4. Afterwards I used “no service password-encryption” command. The passwords were still encrypted. So I was convinced that “no service password-encryption” command does not un-encrypt passwords, instead it leaves the passwords as there are (in this particular case encrypted).

All in all the lab was good experience. I am looking forward to my next lab which will be on the 6th September. Based on the notes so far, i have a feeling that it will be much more interesting than the other one. Apparently it is going to be about CDP (Cisco Discovery Protocol) lab.

Till next time