Router Configuration

This document is a beginner's guide to router configuration, which will give an overview of the basics of routing and then will go into specifics of configuring Cisco and Ascend routers. Cisco documentation tends to read like a dictionary, is often very vague, and tends to give unuseful examples. Ascend's documentation is a bit better, but they are always adding new features which get documented much later. This is an attempt to bring together the fundamental knowledge necessary to make sense of such documentation.

1. What is a router?
2. The IP Protocol
   1. Netmasks, Subnetting, and CIDR
3. Router Theory of Operation
4. Telephone Company Data Circuits
   1. T1 and Fractional T1
   2. Frame Relay
5. Routes
   1. Static Routes
   2. Routing Protocols
   3. OSPF
   4. BGP4
6. Interfaces
   1. Numbered and Unnumbered
   2. Ethernet
   3. Serial (Synchronous)
   4. Ascynchronous
   5. Null
   6. Tunnel
7. Security
   1. Router Security
      1. router passwords
      2. protocol passwords/keys
      3. small services
      4. directed-broadcast
   2. Network Security
8. Dialup
   1. Hardware
      1. Modem Pools
      2. Phone Lines
   2. Authentication and Logging
      1. Radius
   3. Protocols
      1. PPP