Configuration of MOTD Banner on Cisco Router

Setting Up MOTD Banners on Cisco Router

 

A banner is more than just a little cool—one very good reason for having a banner is to give any and all who dare attempt to telnet or dial into your internetwork a little security notice.

And you can create a banner to give anyone who shows up on the router exactly the information you want them to have. Although there are many banner types like exec process creation banner,incoming terminal line banner, login banner, message of the day (MOTD) banner is the most extensively used banner.

Router(config)#banner ?
LINE                c banner-text c, where ‘c’ is a delimiting character
exec                Set EXEC process creation banner
incoming        Set incoming terminal line banner
login                Set login banner
motd               Set Message of the Day banner

Message of the day banner offers an all round performance by giving a message to every person dialing into or connecting to the router via Telnet or auxiliary port, or even through a console port. The part to understand is the delimiting character—its used to tell the router when the message is completed. You can use any character you want for it, but you can’t use the delimiting character in the message itself, that’swhy use . As seen here:

Router(config)#banner motd ?
LINE                c banner-text c, where ‘c’ is a delimiting character
Router(config)#banner motd #
[Enter text message here. End with the character ‘#’.]
#
Router(config)#

For example, you can set a banner on one line as shown:

Router(config)#banner motd # Unauthorized access prohibited! It may lead to legal action. If you are not an authorized user, disconnect now. #