In Chapters 1 through 5 we mainly concentrated on what I would consider essential networking concepts. Those concepts represent a huge portion of the information that you need to be familiar with to be successful on your CCNA and CCDA exams. However, doing well on the exams will also require knowledge of Cisco equipment, commands, and configuration. It’s tempting to want to just jump right in and start configuring a router. Before we do that, we first need to take a closer look at router hardware and internals, and also learn a little bit about the Cisco IOS. Topics that we’ll cover in this chapter include:
- Understanding a router’s ports, LEDs, connections, and cables
- Understanding router memory and storage
- Investigating IOS versions
- An overview of Cisco router models
Because the Cisco 2500 series of routers are relatively inexpensive to obtain and still widely deployed, they represent a great platform to use when studying for the CCNA exam. This chapter focuses on the Cisco 2500 series models to explain concepts, but these concepts generally apply to almost all models universally.
