Default System Name And Prompt Configuration; Configuring A System Name; Understanding Dns - Cisco Catalyst 2950 Software Configuration Manual

Chapter 7 Administering the Switch
This section contains this configuration information:
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Default System Name and Prompt Configuration

The default switch system name and prompt is Switch.

Configuring a System Name

Beginning in privileged EXEC mode, follow these steps to manually configure a system name:
Command
Step 1 configure terminal
Step 2 hostname name
Step 3 end
Step 4
show running-config
Step 5 copy running-config startup-config
When you set the system name, it is also used as the system prompt.
To return to the default hostname, use the no hostname global configuration command.

Understanding DNS

The DNS protocol controls the Domain Name System (DNS), a distributed database with which you can
map host names to IP addresses. When you configure DNS on your switch, you can substitute the host
name for the IP address with all IP commands, such as ping, telnet, connect, and related Telnet support
operations.
IP defines a hierarchical naming scheme that allows a device to be identified by its location or domain.
Domain names are pieced together with periods (.) as the delimiting characters. For example, Cisco
Systems is a commercial organization that IP identifies by a com domain name, so its domain name is
cisco.com. A specific device in this domain, for example, the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) system is
identified as ftp.cisco.com.
To keep track of domain names, IP has defined the concept of a domain name server, which holds a cache
(or database) of names mapped to IP addresses. To map domain names to IP addresses, you must first
identify the host names, specify the name server that is present on your network, and enable the DNS.
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Default System Name and Prompt Configuration, page 7-15
Configuring a System Name, page 7-15
Understanding DNS, page 7-15
Purpose
Enter global configuration mode.
Manually configure a system name.
The default setting is switch.
The name must follow the rules for ARPANET host names. They must start
with a letter, end with a letter or digit, and have as interior characters only
letters, digits, and hyphens. Names can be up to 63 characters.
Return to privileged EXEC mode.
Verify your entries.
(Optional) Save your entries in the configuration file.
Catalyst 2950 and Catalyst 2955 Switch Software Configuration Guide
Configuring a System Name and Prompt
7-15