Lab Objective:
Learn how to install a simple NIC.
Lab Purpose:
There are many manufacturers of NICs, so we will concentrate on the generic features you should find in most of them.
Lab Tool:
Packet Tracer
Lab Topology:
Please use the following topology to complete this lab exercise:
Lab Walkthrough:
Task 1:
Drag two servers onto the canvas and any switch. Don’t connect them yet.
Task 2:
On the left-hand server, press the power button to power it off, then drag a second NIC card into the spare slot. Choose the NM-1CFE.
Task 3:
Power the server up, connect the second NIC to the switch, and for the right server, use the available NIC.
Task 4:
You now have the choice of two NICs to configure on the left server. We will configure FE1.
Task 5:
Set the IP address to 192.168.1.1, 255.255.255.0, and untick ‘auto’. Hard-set the NIC to 100 Mbps and Full Duplex.
Set the NIC to match on the right-hand server, but the IP address should be 192.168.1.2 255.255.255.0
Task 6:
Switches should be able to detect settings on your NIC, but you may also have to set the speed and duplex due to best practices. I will configure the settings for F0/1 on the switch. You can issue the same commands yourself for F0/2. On the switch, I issued a show interfaces f0/1 command, and it revealed the duplex as half, which isn’t what we want.
Switch#show int f0/1
FastEthernet0/1 is down, line protocol is down (disabled)
Hardware is Lance, address is 0000.0c44.2101 (bia 0000.0c44.2101)
BW 100000 Kbit, DLY 1000 usec,
reliability 255/255, txload 1/255, rxload 1/255
Encapsulation ARPA, loopback not set
Keepalive set (10 sec)
Half-duplex, 100Mb/s
input flow-control is off, output flow-control is off
ARP type: ARPA, ARP Timeout 04:00:00
Switch#conf t
Enter configuration commands, one per line. End with CNTL/Z.
Switch(config)#interface fast 0/1
Switch(config-if)#speed 100
Switch(config-if)#duplex full
Switch(config-if)#
%LINK-5-CHANGED: Interface FastEthernet0/1, changed state to up
%LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface FastEthernet0/1, changed state to up
All the triangles by the interfaces should be green now. It can take up to 30 seconds for the process to happen.
Task 7:
Issue another ping from one server to the other.
Notes:
Take some time to check your settings and follow the steps, as this is a very important skill for IT engineers.
