First packet tracer lab

[Domadea]

Hello everyone, I am a student attempting to put together my first packet tracer lab. It's not going well, to put it mildly. So the first out of what many problems I am going to encounter during this project is that I cannot seem to get my routers to play nice at all. If you see the attachments you will see that I can get the computers, switches, and servers to communicate. But the second a router enters the picture no matter what I try and do with it I can't get it to work. So as I am an absolute beginner it's probably something stupid. But if anyone has any input or advice please feel free to let me know. As I have already spent over an hour fiddling with the routers just to try and get them to cooperate. 

[Jon Marshall]

If it is your first lab then it seems overly complicated. 

Create a lab with 2 PCs, 2 switches and a router. 

Connect each PC to a different switch and then connect each switch to a different interface on the router, use 2 vlans/IP subnets and make sure you can ping between the PCs .

Once you can, then expand your lab with more devices and build it up that way rather than the way you have done it. 

Or not, up to you and no criticism intended but in my opinion easier to learn the basics in a small setup and build from there. 

Jon

[Domadea]

I actually did try this and I still couldn't seem to get the routers to work at all. So to clarify will routers not work at all until you have setup vlans and ip subnets? As the rest of the equipment seemed pretty much plug and play. But if you have to configure the routers more that could explain my problem.

[Mohsin Alam]

By default switches have interfaces in up state , but routers have admin shut interfaces.

Get into config mode and type

int <> 

no shut

and this will bring the interface up. Also you would need to assign ip address on interfaces of router to make it communicate with different networks.

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