21 November 2008

Handy Cisco Command - Interface Range


There are many handy Cisco commands that you can use to help you in configuring Cisco devices, these commands well not exactly secret commands but you might not get it from the CCNA curriculum.

One of these handy commands I already posted it at my previous post. But I want to cover it again in case you missed the post.

This one is the interface range command. What this command does is to select a range of interfaces and apply the same commands to them.
This is very handy especially in a Cisco switch environment where you might want to set some ports to be access ports or apply the same security to those ports instead of doing it one by one for each interface.

For example, I want to select the interfaces fastethernet 0/2 to 0/8, with the interface range command I'd just do it like this:

2950> enable
2950# configure terminal
2950 (config)# interface range fa0/2 - 8
2950 (config-if-range)#

There, you notice that instead of displaying 2950 (config-if)# where you can get when you issue interface fa0/2, you'd get the 2950 (config-if-range)# prompt that shows you that you are selecting a range of interfaces.

When you want to select interfaces that are not in sequential order, like when you want to select interfaces fa0/2 to fa0/8, then interfaces fa0/10 to fa0/16, and the interface fa0/24 then you can do it like this:

2950 (config)# interface range fa0/2 -8, fa0/10 - 16, fa0/24
2950 (config-if-range)#

I'll be posting more handy Cisco commands again next time, hope this one is useful for you.