How to Use PuTTY on Cisco Routers and Switches

Use PuTTY on Cisco Routers and Switches:

You might not realize it, but you can use PuTTY on Cisco routers and switches. In this article, we'll show you how to set up PuTTY so that you can use it to access your Cisco device.

What is PuTTY?

PuTTY is a free and open-source terminal emulator for the Windows platform. It is capable of using SSH, Telnet, rlogin, and serial cable connections to network devices. This makes it ideal for connecting to Cisco routers and switches over SSH or Telnet (though you can use PuTTY with other types of equipment as well.)

Why use PuTTY for Cisco Devices?

PuTTY is a free SSH and Telnet client application available on Windows, Mac and Linux. It’s not the most popular option when it comes to managing your Cisco devices, but it’s certainly worth considering if you are looking for a simple command line-based tool that works on multiple platforms.

The reason why I would recommend PuTTY over other alternatives (such as SecureCRT or TeraTerm) is because it has been around since 1997 and has gained a solid reputation among professionals in this field.

This makes me feel confident that their developers will continue to improve their product for years to come without getting greedy about releasing new features every month or so just for the sake of making money; whereas some companies seem more concerned with monetizing their software than creating something useful first before trying to make money from it later on down the road!

In addition to being secure, easy-to-use and reliable all at once - there's also another important factor that brings us back again…

Choosing the Right Terminal Emulation

PuTTY is an open-source terminal emulator. It’s a client-side application that allows you to connect to routers and other network devices using SSH, Telnet and other similar protocols. PuTTY supports Windows, Linux, MacOSX, and several other platforms.

The first step in setting up PuTTY on Cisco devices is choosing the right terminal emulation. Some emulations are more secure than others but also have limitations such as not supporting some terminal commands or not being able to display certain characters. To change the type of emulation used by PuTTY:

Click on Connection > Data > Terminal-type string in the menu bar at the top of your screen (or press Ctrl+O).
You will see a text box where you can enter an emulation name (for example: vt102 for VT102) and optionally add arguments for it (for example: -raw). Click OK when done!

Opening a Connection to Your Cisco Device in PuTTY

To open a connection to your Cisco device in PuTTY:

• Open PuTTY.
• Click the Open button.
• Select the connection type.

Type in the IP address of the Cisco device, including its domain name (if applicable) and subnet mask. For example, if you wanted to connect to a router named "Cisco1" on your local subnet with an IP address of 192.168.1.1 and a subnet mask of 255.255.255.*, then you would type "192 168 1 1" as the hostname and leave everything else blank or enter an IP address from another network that does not have any access to yours (e..g., 10 0 0 0).

Saving Your Session for Future Use in PuTTY

You can save the session for future use by using the following steps

• Click on the “Session” menu and click on “Save Session”.
• Specify a name for your saved session.
• For example, if you want to save your current session as “My First Session”, enter the name of your saved session as My First Session in this field.

Setting up a Pre-Configured Session and Using it to Connect to a New Device

If you have a lot of devices to manage, or if you're working with multiple routers and switches, the last thing you want to be doing is spending time setting up a PuTTY session for each device. Instead, save your sessions so that they can be used again later.

When you've saved your settings as a session, it will appear in the Sessions list at the bottom of the SSH > Saved Sessions tab:

Conclusion

Using PuTTY to connect to Cisco devices is a great way to save time and make your job easier. You can create a pre-configured session and use it over and over again, or you can simply log in with your username and password every time you want to connect. Either way works just fine!