Ways to Connect to a Cisco Router : Console, Auxialiary and Virtual Terminal Lines

Connecting to a Cisco Router

Most OSI layer-1 devices (like Hubs an Repeaters) and rare layer-2 devices come with fixed and unchangeable configuration. But advanced networking devices (obviously, like Cisco Routers and Switches) let you fine tune each and every parameter of our device and make very advanced configs. You can connect to a Cisco router to configure it, verify its configuration, and check statistics.

There are mainly three ways to connect to a Cisco Router which are using the console port, using auxilliary port and using virtual terminal lines. All these ways are discussed below.

1.         Most often, the first place you would connect to is the console port. The console port is usually an RJ-45 (8-pin modular) connection located often at the back of the router—by default, there’s may or may not be a password set. The new ISR routers use cisco as the username and cisco as the password by default.

2.         You can also connect to a Cisco router through an auxiliary port. An auxiliary port allows you to configure modem commands so that a modem can be connected to the router. This is a cool feature—it lets you dial up a remote router and attach to the auxiliary port if the router is down and you need to configure it using console like features. The auxiliary port can also be used same like console port (to directly connect RJ-45).

3.         The third way to connect to a Cisco router is through programs like Telnet and Secure Shell etc. (In-band means configuring the router through the network, the opposite of “out-of-band.”)Telnet is a terminal emulation program that acts as though it’s a dumb terminal. You can use Telnet to connect to any active interface on a router, such as an Ethernet or serial port.