in this brief overview packet tracer we will view the two different views logical and physical and two different modes real-time simulation as well as examine the main menu bars, toolbars and other controls parts that would make the Packet Tracer so powerful at the top we have it traditional menu bar the file edit options and so on probably the only file option
that need specific explanation is PKZ because we can add custom backgrounds and custom icons to the Packet Tracer workspaces if you want to save those graphics you need to save as a PKZ common cartridge is something that relates to instructors only and this is an instructor version so there's a few options students won't see notice it uses standard keyboard shortcuts options probably the most important options for student is a user profile where you can put in your name your email address and additional information instructor may require you that you to complete those in submitting assignments in a special note in the self-created packet tracer activities changing the name or the user profile at all may reset the entire activity couples of other options that useful is under preferences, device name labels such as show device model so I can see this is a 2960 this is a 2911 or font which is also very useful I set my command line interface font to 12 was instead of the standard "8" just so will capture you zooming in and out the three main tool bars which are the main the right the bottom some a drawing power in a custom device dialogue the drawing palette is how we create these rectangles devices you can customize modular device and save it for later use a variety of extensions now this is an instructor version so student will not see as many but you probably will have multi-user and these additional agent users down here, help is very useful it will find out what version Packet Tracer you're running the tutorials are short online slide shows how to do common task in the content is an online manual the main toolbar lies immediately below the menu bar you reduce the most common commands File Save and so on copy and paste, undo/redo, the zoom commands in the drawing palette and the customize device dialog we're on the right hand side there are 2 other things help that'll take you straight to the online manual in information which is about that particular network you're working with you can type any text in here you would I've chosen to put in an addressing plan for this particular topology underneath the main toolbar is the logical physical in navigation bar it looks somewhat like a framing element but it is active with many controls let's take a brief look at physical physical allows us to create buildings and closets we can navigate down let's zoom in a little bit that here's our city than a city I may have buildings building I may have a wire closet you can see now this is a navigation I'm in the main wiring closet I can go back, this bar indicate where I am backed it home city and so on back to the logical view if the I accident go into physical, how do you get back click on the logical icon my main workspace right over here are right into a bar is where there's a lot of action our select tool works like we can drag to select I can hover to find out some information about the device is a rather you can see the IP the IPv6 and MAC address as the interfaces and their states rather up or down if I click on a device, I can get an inside view of the device I can look at it physically I can look at Config mode which is GUI interface for configuring so for example if I wanna turn Gigabit 0/0 on I can just click here and underneath here we're actually show me in the bottom portion of the window the command line commands or I can go to the command line so in give the typical committed so IP interface group for example, so that doesn't have all the full operating system commands but it has many many useful commands for usual learning tool one more thing to show in the physical is we can power cycle the device we can turn it off in the slot we can install additional cards so I select it in a trick which will give me two WAN interfaces notice because I should power it back on, yes I power it back on but right now it's rebooted, all right we have to move on not appropriate for this small lab place notes which is how we place things like text directly on the page that's not part of any components the delete, it will delete whatever selected or I can do it something else I'm gonna undo undo because it only has one level undo I showed we hover that we can find out information if I hover over a cable it would show me the cable I attached to but if I want more information, I need to click the inspect tool where i can look at for example the routing table of router the the inspection choices are appropriate for the devices on switch I can see the Mac table for example the polygon tool which is how we draw these things resize polygon which let me change existing shapes add simple PDU this is very usefull I'm gonna click on headquarters to what is the simple PDU? it is an ICMP echo request PDU and when I click on it that uses my source when I click on another object that choice my destination and I see in my user created packet window that it was successful and if it wasn't successful as many one-shot first time pings are not I can simply double-click on it to fire it to force it to travel again of course we didn't see it because it's very fast the custom PDU gives me a lot more variety for example if I wanted to ping from the headquartered router I can choose the outgoing interface which is very useful for checking successful routing and now I can n under
can I think I can use other protocols to same destination IP address one shot or periodic if I want to send a string pattern repeatedly it will very useful for troubleshooting when there is a problem I mention that this was real time and the successful ping was very quick
if we go to simulation mode we can see that there is a packet sitting there waiting to be trapped travel forward in by clicking one step at a time I can watch the Packer travel through my network at any particular point I can double click on a package and view an overview of, in this case it will be a incoming and outgoing PDU, because this is echo request followed by and ICMP a echo reply or you can look at the PDU in detail and see the Ethernet frame the ip header and the ICMP payload within the IP packet or I can look at the outbound PDU as well, very useful I also can auto capture instead of clicking each step I couldn't just let travel as it wishes and then stop it at any particular point and i cant fired again I mean it's in progress auto capture play here we go,then it goes automatic and I can adjust speed over here but there you go I can go back to real time mode let's take a look at the bottom toolbar in the bottom toolbar we can choose what device required to build our networks,
I need a switch so I'm going to choose a switch there may be more devices and more models as we move into the future I'm gonna place at 2960 switch here now I need to connect that 2960 so I have by various connections I would choose it very nice I can simply choose the auto-choose tool, say I want to connect from East to switch 0 you know make its best guess which is usually pretty good and choose the correct cable and connect in some packet tracer activities your instructor may lock that and you won't be able to use the automatic tool you have to know which type a cable to use that bottom tells me the type of the cable, I can click here I'm choosing a straight through to connect from switch port 2 to PC E1, you want accuse me complete control now if I plug into the wrong port or in this case auto-complete shows the first available port which was a 0 I can click in my status light click over here and move it Ethernet 0/1 I'm gonna redo that i'm gonna move this to a different interface because known as I have the orange light that's because spanning tree protocol is resolving whether it's safe to come up I could wait fifty seconds or in my real time simulation control panel I can say fast forward time and I can fast-forward real time to even speeded up further so I could speed up the due process or STP or anything I'm waiting on I can also power cycle all my devices simultaneously in going to physical view but like the real equipment if I haven't saved my config it will of course lose the config wrap it up, I can have multiple scenarios for my pings and my custom packets I can talk toggle the PDU window to make it very large to expand it more detail or I can just keep it down where it was if I click Delete here does not delete the scenario it just deletes the package within that scenario in that concluded our brief overview