Crossover cables and PT-Router And crossover cables in general A bit on the RJ-45 Connector and connectors in general: Remember, you can use these for more than one thing! Ethernet LAN Serial link (on some routers and such) IBM Model M Keyboards Phones that handle more than 2 lines Other stuff? I made the extension cord of doom for my bitcoin miner Don't plug anything else into it! Actually, a lot of computer gear would be cool with it Professional vs. stuff you do at home because it works "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" I don't think anybody ever told this to bulldozer operators If you work for a more interesting firm: Will we get hacked? Will it catch on fire? Will a brief outage cost a lot of money? If no to all, go for it! Marine rescue laws, and liability I'm heading for Cyb300 here, so I'll stop Gigabit ethernet, and how could PoE ever work? What's the baseline level? http://ditzymummyliz.blogspot.com/2017/09/power-over-ethernet-pinout.html Alright, so be careful what you plug things into Also, I'm a lousy example, but don't make the cord of doom 120v over USB... Remember the basics on power: Volts (voltage) Amps (current) Watts (power) Ohms (resistance) AC vs. DC RMS Voltage on AC Packet tracer PT-Router and PT-Switch vs. real gear My recommendation (feel free to ignore it): Use real gear So you start to build familiarity with real products you might see I probably say this because I need to do so myself Network professional will probably say stuff like "Can you log into the 4331 and tell me if the RJ45 is even on?" "probably"...Darren, do you know? Setting up lab 1 with 4 ports on one router: You actually need chapter 16 for this Thought it'd be easier somehow... Switches: Logically speaking, you can just add as many of these as you want Don't be afraid to add more switches If you want one port to be more than one, use a switch Of course there is some switching delay It's not very significant, especially for Internet traffic There's also a failure rate Switches are pretty reliable If you've got an extra for convenience reasons, it could also be a spare They cost money That might be a better reason to minimize them More than 48 ports is rare, 48 port is the usual "big one" Home switches are more like 5 or 8, I usually buy at least 8 Layer 2 vs. Layer 3 switch layer 2: Home office and such, no terminal, no vlan support layer 3: Expensive, has a terminal, supports vlans, for bigger networks Ok, let's configure a switch! Routers deal with IP addresses Switches deal with MAC addresses We should be able to observe the MAC address table How about putting in a bunch of switches? Can we disable and enable particular ports? Copper is for the birds, let's use fiber Why not? In packet tracer, everything is free! Might have to click around a little Maybe we'll learn something: What if you connect a switch to itself? What if you put a few of them in some kind of loop?