Cisco Packet Tracer is a network simulation tool we are going to use to get familiar to simulate our first network.
The essentials
First of all the workspace has to work with you. For me under Options -> Preferences I turn on the the option “Show Port Labels in Logical Workspace”. But keep in mind, you cannot decide where those labels go. If you want to decide where those labels are going, then work with notes. But you have to do a lot of work for each connected port.
One rule I really try to stick with it is, it has to be functional NOT good looking. That’s extremely hard for me, because I just hate it, if something looks like you did not invest some time in it..
List of essentials:
- Turn on the preferences that help you see connections clearly.
- Use labels and notes wisely so your topology stays readable.
- Stay functional, not overly fancy.
- Use Simulation mode to understand packet flow.
- Save your work so you can keep learning from it.
Realtime vs. Simulation
In realtime the network behaves like you would expect. You click on a switch, open the CLI and send like a ping command to your server or switch. If it works, you will see it immediately.
In simulation, when I run the exact same command, the whole process gets slowed down extremely and we watch each step happen. You see which traffic leaves the switch and makes its way to its destination and so on. As we go deeper into networking, we will hear terms like headers, MAC addresses and tables. In Simulation mode we can inspect that information visually and that is extremely helpful when we try to understand the network traffic.