Question

Tom is a new engineer at NetWorks. On his first day his supervisor and the Senior Networking Engineer, Carissa Johnson, hand him a work order. The work order tells him to go to Building 3, Lab Room 201, Equipment Row 6, Rack 14 to connect to a router labeled Prometheus23, issue a 'show run' command, copy the screen output to a text file, and send the file to Carrissa at [email protected]. As Tom is getting off the 2nd floor elevator, he wonders why he had to drive 5 miles and waste an hour of his time when a network telnet/SSH channel could have been used to access it. After locating Rack 14, he sees Prometheus23 in U space 6. He takes out his laptop and connects the console cable he brought with him. That is when he notices that the data link light on the Fast Ethernet port is not on, even though it appears connected. After opening up the PuTTY access, he gets the message "Password required, none set". Tom knows the password, but wonders why it is not even prompting him for a password and wonders what is going on. In your original post, answer the following: Is Tom missing something that he should know? Why did he have to make the trip instead of connecting remotely? What is a Telnet/SSH and how is it used to program routers and switches? Make sure you conduct research for your post -- either using class content or from the Web, and make sure you cite your source(s).

Answer 1

My suspicion to why tom had to make the trip is, one, the work order requested he go to the lab, secondly his boss probably already knew the remote access wasn't working due to not being able to enter the ssh password, so a VPN would not work. Is this a good assumption to why he had to make the trip and why he couldnt use a VPN? Also, I am not sure what tom is missing that he should know, probably because I don't know whats missing. If I had to take a guess though, would it have to do with using his own cable to connect to.