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Cisco CCNA Certification: Five Key Combinations You Should Know |
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When you start studying for your CCNA and CCNP exams, many
books will present you with a huge list of keystroke shortcuts
for use on Cisco routers. While the 640-801, 811, and 821
exams may ask you about one or two of these, you really have
to get hands-on experience with these commands to master them.
Even better, there are some key combinations that Cisco routers
mention, but then don't tell you what they are! Let's take
a look at a few of the more helpful key combinations, and
conclude with the "secret" way to stop a ping or
traceroute.
The up arrow on your keyboard is great for repeating the
last command you typed. Let's say you mis-enter an access-list.
Instead of typing it from the beginning, just hit your up
arrow to repeat it, then fix the problem.
CTRL-A takes the cursor to the beginning of a typed line.
If you've written an extended ACL, you know that can be a
very long command, and one you probably don't want to retype.
If you get a carat indicating there is a problem with the
line, use your up arrow to repeat the command. If you see
the error is near the beginning, use CTRL-A to move the cursor
immediately to the beginning of the line. CTRL-E takes the
cursor to the end of a typed line.
To move the cursor through a typed line without erasing characters,
you've got a couple of options. I personally like to use the
left and right arrows, but you can also use CTRL-B to move
back and CTRL-F to move forward.
Finally, there's the combination that Cisco mentions to you
when you run ping or traceroute, but they don't tell you what
it is! If you send an extended ping or a traceroute, you could
be looking at asterisks for a long time if you don't know
this one. In the following example, a traceroute is obviously
failing:
R2#traceroute 10.1.1.1
Type escape sequence to abort.
Tracing the route to 10.1.1.1
1 * * *
2 *
The problem is that you're going to get 30 rows of those
asterisks, which is frustrating and time-consuming at the
same time. Note the router console message "Type escape
sequence to abort". That's helpful - but what is it?
Here it is: Just type CTRL-SHIFT-6 twice, once right after
the other. You won't see anything on the router console, but
the traceroute will terminate.
R2#traceroute 10.1.1.1
Type escape sequence to abort.
Tracing the route to 10.1.1.1
1 * * *
2 * * *
3
R2#
The traceroute was successfully terminated. This combination
works for pings as well, both extended and regular. Of all
the keystrokes you can learn, this one is the most valuable!
About the Author:
Article by Chris Bryant.
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