Preparing Network Connections

The first three chapters of this book dealt with an introduction to networking, networking concepts, and IP addressing—basically theory and concept information. In this chapter, I’ll begin discussing the applied side of networking. This chapter focuses on installing your networking devices (switches and routers), cabling up your LAN and WAN connections, and establishing a console connection so that you can put a configuration on these devices. Once you have established a console connection in this chapter, Chapter 5 will begin the basics of using the router’s or switch’s command-line interface (CLI) to put a basic configuration on these devices....