Exploring the Initial Router Setup

To connect to a router, you also need communication software such as Putty or Tera Term that must be properly configured. The following settings must be defined before establishing a connection:

• Speed: 9600 bps
• Data bits: 8
• Parity: None
• Stop bit: 1
• Flow control: None

Once everything is correctly configured, you connect the cable to the console port and switch on the router. The first thing that the router will do is power-on self-test (POST), to test the hardware. Then it will find the Cisco IOS software on the flash drive and load it. In the end, it will find previously saved configuration if there is one, and load it, otherwise will offer a wizard for basic router configuration.

The following output shows a user EXEC mode prompt on a router with an existing configuration:

A router without an existing configuration always prompts the user for starting the System Configuration Dialog, which is nothing more than a simple wizard to configure basic settings on the router.

This is an optional feature, and because of the limited configuration settings supported, it is usually skipped by network engineers. You can always start the wizard by using the setup command in privileged EXEC mode.

The following output shows the prompt for using the System Configuration Dialog: