Dear Learners,

This LeD is to introduce you and help get you started with Cisco Packet Tracer. This LeD has five videos and a few questions.

One very essential part of any technical training is to be able to apply and test the concepts we have learnt. Even better is to be able to explore them further in a real life scenario. One of the ways of doing it is by using simulation platforms that provide a realistic environment. Here you can challenge your understanding or just play around and observe the impact of your actions without putting yourself or the systems at the risk of some major failure.

Now we introduce you to your playground for this course on networking.

The next video will show you how you could download Cisco Packet Tracer. Please note Cisco Packet Tracer requires you to login using a net academy account. Though you may use it as a guest but with limited features.

You may register and download Cisco Packet Tracer from the Cisco Net Academy.

Note: Cisco Packet Tracer requires you to login using a net academy account.

Now that you have downloaded and installed Cisco Packet Tracer we will have a look at some of its features.

In the next video we use a network that is already configured. We also look at the real time mode where the network behaves like a real network and responds immediately where as in the simulation mode we could look at the same network activities instance by instance.

Finally we look at Logical and Physical typologies (Layouts) of the network. The logical representation is like a map of the network where as the physical representations show where and how the devices are placed in a physical space and how they are connected among each other.

Now that you have some idea of using Cisco Packet Tracer Lets get back to our discussion on loading a web page and try loading one in Cisco Packet Tracer.