Infrastructure, Systems, and Connectivity
This hands-on lab covers creating VLANs in the extended range above 1005, explains why VTP version matters for supporting them, and verifies an extended VLAN functions identically to a standard-range VLAN once created.
This hands-on lab covers changing a trunk's native VLAN away from the default VLAN 1 for security purposes, and shutting down unused switch ports as a baseline hardening practice, verifying both changes with appropriate show commands.
This hands-on lab covers restricting which VLANs are permitted to cross a specific trunk link, preventing unnecessary broadcast traffic and improving security, and separately covers safely changing a switch's VTP version within an existing domain.
This hands-on lab observes a switch port transitioning through the Spanning Tree Protocol states of blocking, listening, learning, and forwarding as it comes online, and covers the show commands used to check a port's current state and role.
This hands-on lab manually influences Spanning Tree root bridge election by adjusting bridge priority on two competing switches, verifying which switch becomes root before and after the change, and confirming the resulting port roles update accordingly.
This hands-on lab uses the spanning-tree root primary and root secondary macro commands to configure a primary and backup root bridge without manually calculating priority values, and verifies IOS automatically selects an appropriate priority relative to the current root.
This hands-on lab configures Spanning Tree bridge priority across several VLANs in a single command using a VLAN range, rather than repeating the configuration individually for each VLAN, and verifies the priority was correctly applied to every VLAN in the range.
This hands-on lab configures PortFast on an access port connecting to an end-user device, bypassing the normal listening and learning delay so the port forwards traffic immediately, and covers why PortFast should never be applied to a port connecting to another switch.
This hands-on lab migrates a switch from classic PVST+ to Rapid PVST+, comparing the significantly faster convergence time and the updated port role terminology that comes with the newer protocol.
This hands-on lab bundles two physical links between switches into a single logical EtherChannel using static, PAgP, and LACP modes in turn, verifies each bundle forms correctly, and demonstrates the mismatched-mode failure that prevents a bundle from forming.
This hands-on lab configures switchport dynamic desirable and dynamic auto modes, demonstrating how Dynamic Trunking Protocol automatically negotiates whether a link becomes a trunk or remains an access port, and covers why relying on DTP is generally discouraged in production networks.
This hands-on lab configures a default gateway on a Layer 2 switch's management interface so it can be reached and managed from a remote subnet, and distinguishes this from a router's own default route used to reach networks beyond its directly connected interfaces.
