So you have just entered the world of Cisco networking by starting to prepare for CCENT or CCNA and would like to get a taste of everything in Cisco, but do not have the luxury to afford real hardware. Well, who needs a few pieces of real hardware when you can design complex topologies with tens (if not hundreds) of Cisco devices and watch as packets move between them, and do all of this on your laptop, sitting anywhere? The best part is, if you are an instructor or interviewer, practical questions can be created with Packet Tracer; you'll learn how to do this in Chapter 11, Creating Packet Tracer Assessments.

This chapter will guide you through the installation of Packet Tracer, describe its graphical interface, and show you how to create your first simple topology in it. Because this is a simulator, not all real world (read real hardware) protocols are supported. So we will begin by seeing which protocols it does support.