Purpose

In this lab, we used Cisco Packet Tracer to build and design a school network.

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Design Addressing

To start, the following table was created to specify VLANs, hosts, and network information needed to build the network.

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Network Build

Switch Configurations

In Packet Tracer, the VLANs were added to the VLAN database and configured onto the edge-layer switches. The four switches were configured like so:

Note: In the config terminal for the switches, using commands such as interface range FastEthernet 0/x-y in (config) and switchport access vlan x in (config-if-range) will be useful and more efficient by allowing the user to configure multiple ports at a time and define the VLAN for all ports that are in the range, respectively.

End User Device Configurations

Then, the end user devices were configured with the appropriate IP information and connected to the correct ports to ensure connectivity. The FacStaff network (VLAN 100) was assigned as 10.17.11.0/24 with IPs ranging from 10.17.11.1-6 and a default gateway of 10.17.11.7.

The Student network (VLAN 110) was assigned as 10.17.8.0/23 with IPs ranging from 10.17.11.1-6 and a default gateway of 10.17.8.7.

The StuLab1 network (VLAN 130) was assigned as 10.17.12.0/26 with IPs ranging from 10.17.12.1-2 and a default gateway of 10.17.12.3.

And the StuLab2 network (VLAN 140) was assigned as 10.17.12.64/26 with an IP of 10.17.12.65 and a default gateway of 10.17.12.66.

After physically connecting the devices to the switches, devices on the same VLAN and switch should be able to be pinged but not different switches or VLANs.

Trunk Configurations

Next, the four VLANs were added to the VLAN database on the distribution-layer switches.

Then, the FastEthernet0/1 and 0/2 ports were configured as trunk ports for both of the switches. The screenshots below show this for the 0/1 port on the East-Core-Switch-01 switch and the 0/2 port on the West-Core-Switch-01, respectively.

Lastly, the trunk ports were configured for the edge-layer switches to FastEthernet0/1. The screenshots below show this for the East-Edge-01 switch and West-Edge-02 switch.

Connecting Edge-Layer Switches to Distribution-Layer Switches

After connecting the edge-layer switches on port FastEthernet0/1 to the distribution-layer switches on ports FastEthernet0/1 and 0/2 using cross-over cables, it should now be possible to ping between two systems on the same VLAN despite being connected to different switches.

Enabling Routing

Using the East-Core-Switch-01 switch as the router, multi-layer routing was enabled and the VLANs were added to the CLI. The latter task was accomplished by assigning the default gateway and subnet mask as the router address associated with each VLAN.

Note: When typing in the CLI, using the command ip routing in (config) will allow the user to enable routing on multi-layer switches. In addition, typing in the name of a VLAN such as interface vlan 100 in (config) and typing in the router address associated with said VLAN such as ip address 10.17.11.7 255.255.255.0 in (config-if) will allow the user to enter the configuration mode for the specified VLAN interface as well as set the IP information for the VLAN, respectively.

When this is accomplished, it will now be possible to ping between two systems that are on different VLANs in EAST.

East-West Trunk Configuration

Finally, the GigabitEthernet0/1 ports on the East and West core switches were configured as trunk ports and connected using cross-over cables.

Once configured and connected, all devices should now be able to be pinged across the network regardless of the associated VLAN.