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Basic Cisco Router Configuration Steps

This post is by no means an exhaustive tutorial about Cisco Routers and how to configure their numerous features. It i s just a step-by-step guide for

the most basicconfiguration needed to make the router operational. When you first power on a new Cisco Router, you have the option of using the

setup utility which allows you to create a basic initial configuration. However, in this post I will show you how to do this basic setup with the Command

Line Interface (CLI). Mastering the Cisco Router CLI is essential for more complex configuration tasks and it i s the most important knowledge you should

acquire if you want to become a Cisco network administrator.

The basic CLI modes that we will be referring below are as following:

Router>

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My-Router(config-if)# no shutdown

My-Router(config-if)# exit

Step4: Configure Routing (Static or Dynamic)

The Routers main purpose is to find the best route path towards a destination network and forward packets according to the best path. There are two

main ways a router knows where to send packets. The administrator can assign static routes, or the router can learn routes by using a dynamic

routing protocol. For simple network topologies, static routing is preferred over dynamic routing. Lets see how to configure static routes from Global

Configuration Mode.

My-Router(config)# ip route [destination network] [subnet mask] [gateway]

My-Router(config)# ip route 200.200.200.0 255.255.255.0 100.100.100.2

The command above tells the router that network 200.200.200.0/24 is reachable via gateway address 100.100.100.2.

Another popular static route that we usually configure on Internet Border routers is the default static route:

My-Router(config)# ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 50.50.50.1

The default static route above instructs the router to send ALL packets that the router does not have a more specific route entry to gateway address

50.50.50.1 (which might be the ISP gateway address).

Step5: Save your configuration

Save your current running configuration into NVRAM. This will overwrite the startup configuration.

My-Router(config)# exit

My-Router# copy running-config startup-config

You can display your current configuration to verify your settings as following:

My-Router# show running-config