How to use Putty Terminal Emulator on a Cisco Router or Switch

How to use Putty Terminal Emulator on a Cisco Router or Switch

Putty, an open source, is a network file transfer application protocol. It supports protocols like Telnet, SSH, SCP, rlogin etc. Putty was designed for windows platform initially and later it was developed for various operating systems.

HyperTerminal is the emulator software that helps you to communicate with router or a switch and provides Command line interface of a router or a switch. HyperTerminal software is readily available for the operating systems whose version is less than Windows Vista.

Operating systems from Vista does not have HyperTerminal in them. Hence there is need for new emulator software to communicate, configure, manage, and monitor Cisco routers or switches. Putty helps to serve the purpose.

Putty, an open source, is a network file transfer application protocol. It supports protocols like Telnet, SSH, SCP, rlogin etc. Putty was designed for windows platform initially and later it was developed for various operating systems.

Following are the prerequisites for configuring router or switch using HyperTerminal

  1. A Cisco router or Switch.
  2. A console cable for connecting router to PC.
  3. A PC with serial port on it.
  4. In the absence of Serial port one can make use of USB port present on the system.
  5. Proper cables must be taken during the selection of cable depending on the availability of ports.
  6. HyperTerminal software, it is available by default in windows XP operating system.

Connecting router or switch to computer:

  1. Connect one of end of console cable to the console port of router
  2. Connect other end of cable to serial port of Computer.
  3. In absence of serial port use RJ-45 to USB console port and connect to USB port available on Computer.

Configuring Cisco router or switch:

  1. Download Putty software. It is freely available.
  2. Once downloaded, Double click on putty.exe file.
  3. The software very small and no need to follow any installation steps.
  4. A window pops up.
  5. Select connection type as serial
  6. Enter appropriate Port number and set baud rate as 9600
  7. Click open
  8. Putty provides you a new window providing access to the command line interface of the router or switch connected.
  9. Make the necessary configurations that are needed.

Putty apart from providing serial console connection to router, it also provides remote login sessions with the help of protocols like Telnet, SSH etc. As putty is an open source many variants like Puttytel, PSCP and many more versions are available. Putty also helps one to store logs that are generated while using putty software.

Read more

   CCNA Tutorial

   CCNA Practice Test