The image above depicts the design of the network you and Sam created in your home. If we implemented the network in Cisco Packet Tracer, it would look like this.
As we have mentioned earlier, the switch is a plug and play device. You do not have to worry about configuring the switch to set up a network. At least not for now.
If you have watched the videos in the Getting Started with Cisco Packet Tracer then you know how to build a network using switches. If you haven’t already, please watch the videos. This is sort of a prerequisite for understanding the topics covered in this tutorial.
If you left-click on the switch and zoom in on the physical view, you’ll see the following.
This is the physical view of the 2960-24TT switch(switch 0).
The switch port on a network switch is the physical opening into which a data cable can be plugged. Switch ports are typically rectangular on three sides with a V-shaped point on either the top or bottom. The number of ports on a switch varies according to its function. A typical home router may have five ports, whereas a large network switch may have up to 52 ports. Because one port is reserved for the cable that connects the switch to the router, the number of devices that can connect to an Ethernet switch is one less than the number of physical ports.
If you look closely at the physical views of the switch, you will notice that there are other ports that are not RJ45 ports. We will not go over them in this tutorial. We will only use RJ45 ports for our network connection. However, you can look up Types of Ethernet Switch Ports by Data Rates on Google. You can also learn more about switches by reading this article.