How to Configure Cisco Switch | Easy Tutorial

This article is about the How to Configure Cisco Switch, a complete guide for configuration of Cisco Switch for a Beginner. For ease of understanding we are diving this tutorial into following basic steps :

Access your Cisco Switch for Configurations
Check the default or Current configurations on Switch
Set Host-name on Cisco Switch
Configuring Vlan on Switch
Assign IP address to Cisco Switch
Secure Your Switch with Basic Passwords
Access and trunk port Configurations

Access your Cisco Switch for Configurations

For access your Cisco switch you may need a console cable. Power-on your Cisco switch. Now make a console connection for Basic Cisco Switch Configuration. You need a console cable for this, you can understand the whole process with the following figure.

Using a console or rollover cable, you can connect the switch to your computer. Once you have the physical cable connection, you are required a software for getting the configuration interface on your PC. For this you can use a famous software known as Putty, you can download it free from internet. Open the putty and you can try the following basic configurations for console connection to your Switch.

On successful connection you will see initial command-prompt “Switch>”. Type the command “enable” & press enter key to get in to privileged_mode with symbol (“Switch#”). This mode is know as privileged EXEC mode. You can learn more basic Cisco commands here.

Check the default or Current configurations on Switch

For checking the default or current configuration on switch you can use the command “show ruuning-configuration” in privileged EXEC mode. This command will show all configurations on switch. With the running configurations you can examine the different setting on switch like:

IOS version of Cisco Switch
Host-name of Cisco Switch
IP configurations of different physical and virtual interfaces on switch
Routing protocols configurations
Different switch password
etc

If you are using a new Cisco Switch then you need to configure it at own. In next steps you will learn the basic configurations of Cisco Switch.

Set Host-name on Cisco Switch

One of the basic setting initially you need to configure is to change the host-name of your switch. You can use the following configurations for setting host-name on Cisco Switch.
Switch>enable Switch(config)#configure terminal Switch(config)#hostname S1

S1(config)#exit

Configuring Vlan on Switch

With the VLAN you can reduce size of the broadcast-domain, and you can divide your network into different small network segments. Suppose you have two departments in your organization i.e. IT and HR , in such case you divide your network devices into two different network segment with using VLANs. And in this scenario you dont need the additional physical extra switch. You can create the vlans on your switch with the following commands:
Switch3(config)#vlan 10 Switch3(config-vlan)#exit

Switch3(config)#vlan 20
Switch3(config-vlan)#exit

Above command will create two vlans and you can assign IT department users to vlan 10 and HR department users to VLan 20. For assigning a port to VLan you can review the following commands:
s1(config) # interface range fe 0 / 1 - 2 s1(config -if-range) # switchport mode access s1(config -if-range) # switchport access vlan 10 s1(config -if-range) # exit

s 1(config) # interface range fe 0 / 3 – 4
s 1 (config -if-range) # switchport mode access
s1(config- if-range) # switchport access vlan 20
s 1(config- if-range) # exit

With the above configuration port 1 and 2 are assign a vlan 10 (IT department) & interfaces f3 and f4 are assigned to vlan 20 (HR). You can learn more about inter-vlan routing from Here.

Assign IP address to Cisco Switch

You can assign IP address on Cisco switch if your switch have the layer-3 capability. If you dont have a layer-3 switch then you can even assign an IP address to vlan interface for management purposes. For assigning an IP address to Cisco Switch you need to access the respective interface and then use the following commands:
Sw2(config)#interface vlan 10 Sw2 (config -if) #ip address 172.111.1.11 255.255.255.0 Sw2(config -if) # no shutdown
For assigning an IP address to physical interface on Cisco switch you can user the same commands:
Sw2(config)#interface f0/1 Sw2 (config -if) #ip address 192.167.1.11 255.255.255.0 Sw2(config -if) # no shutdown

Secure Your Switch with Basic Passwords

You can set the different password on Cisco switch in order to make it secure. For setting the login password or enable password to cisco switch . You can use the following commands on Cisco Switch:
Sw1#configure t Sw1(config) # line console 0 Sw1(config - line) # password CISCO Sw1(config-line)#login
For the remote access or telnet access you can configure the password in following way:
Sw1(config-line)#line vty 0 15 Sw1(config-line)#password cisco Sw1(config-line)#login Sw1(config-line)#exit

Access and trunk port Configurations

There are different type of port that you can configure on your Cisco Switch like Access port and trunk port. Access port can carry the traffic of single Vlan only . Access port can be use to connect a PC or IP phone with your Cisco switch. Trunk port can carry the traffic for multiple vlans, Normally these port are use for connecting two switches with each other. Following are basic configuration examples of access and trunk ports:

For Trunk configurations you can use the following commands:

Sw1(config)# interface f 0/1
Sw1(config-if)# switchport mode trunk
Sw1(config-if)# switchport trunk native vlan 10

For access port configurations you can review the following cisco configurations:

Sw1(config)# interface f0/1
Sw1(config-if)# switchport mode access Sw1(config-if)# end

For more detailed on switch network you can visit How to design switch network.

Tutorial on Cisco Router Configuration CCNA

I hope this is informative for you, i tried to share the very basic information regarding the Cisco switch configuration in this article. I tried to cover the maximum content of the topic. If you believe that some info is still be the part of this article then please share your views in comments for further addition. Thank you for visiting and reading this…!

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