Sunday, June 24, 2012

The CCNA thingy

This may be a bit out of the line for a blogspot entry but what the heck. I thought I would put down a bit of the summary of a course on networking. It was a 14 day course and kind of interesting because it opened my eyes a lil.

We generally use internet so often that we tend to take it for granted but there is another world lurking below the software jargon. The world of switches and routers that kind of is boring but in some ways is terribly easy to know.

The course concentrated on use and configuration of Routers(of course CISCO ones). What we learnt is this:

1. Routers are "intelligent" switches operating on an OS called IOS.
2. Routers connect one network to another.
3.You can use routers to monitor traffic between networks and also do a bit of jiggery-pookery to configure them.
4. Basically you can tell them 'connect this network to that'..poor guys will do that.But even more in teresting is that you can tell them..'dont allow this ,dont allow that etc'
5. The basic identity of the end device that is your computer is the IP address and the MAC adress..its like the id of an individual.
6. Switches are low level routers used for LAN and guess wat you can programme them too to do your bidding.

7. TELNET is an awesome way to get inside the Switch /Router from any computer.

8. Servers can be any computer..basically all servers do is to store tables. Depending upon your choice, tell the server to use the relevant table to route traffic. Sab tables ka khel hai.

9. A programme called Packet Tracer is the software you use to configure switches/router on a GUI. A CLI is the alternative way to do it. Using it you can give your switch any property thats allowed.

10. Tea is a must in a 4 hr class