Make your own Packet Tracer Lab

Why suffer when you can make others suffer too? It’s really not that hard.

a Parks and Recreation-themed lab in the works

Making your own labs is one of the best ways to help improve your abilities as a Cisco network administrator. However, Packet Tracer is a strange beast that can be annoying to figure out on your own. Here’s how to get started.

Step 1: Plan and draft a readme

First, we need to create our instructions. I like to start by drafting the instructions since it goes over what I intend to cover and any configurations I want to emphasize.

Usually, I organize the instructions like so:

Introduction/Scenario (“Welcome to the company…your job is to…”)

Addressing Table (if you’re feeling nice)

Protocol 1 (DHCP, NAT… should be required for next steps)

Protocol 2 (VPN, ACLs…)

…

Checking Connectivity (things students should check if they’re lost)

2. Setting up your answer network

Now, once you have a first draft of your instructions, open up Packet Tracer and connect up your answer network. This is the topology that scoring will be based off of.

I like keeping the instructions and Packet Tracer file (.pkz for unscored labs) in Google Drive accessible via Google Drive for Desktop. That way, it’s easy to share/collaborate on a Packet Tracer and I can work on it from any device. Watch out: if you have the file open at the same time on multiple devices with this method, your changes can be overwritten.

Usually, I start by dragging out a bunch of devices and moving them around until I like how they’re organized. I then use Auto Cable to cable them together so that I don’t have to worry about what kind to use.

auto connect is the farthest left cable

It is still useful to know how things should be wired, in case you don’t have Auto Cable (it can be disabled through Activity Wizard).

straight-through or crossover?

A very important point is DON’T DO DO WR (or copy run startor equivalent commands that save your configurations). You’ll want to be able to revert back to a blank device later.

At this point, an addressing table becomes useful. For your first few labs, you want to make sure addressing is consistent to save a few hours’ worth of headaches. Here’s a simple addressing table from a lab of mine.

sample addressing table, note that I kept the subnet masks and what PC’s *should* get assigned to via DHCP

Often I make a lot of changes to my original instructions as I realize what’s feasible and what’s cool to add. Don’t worry if you feel like you don’t know what to do next, you can always look through labs online to get some ideas.

While you shouldn’t save device configurations, you should definitely save the Packet Tracer file itself to avoid losing work. Usually, I make backups after major changes so I can revert to those if I make an undesirable change. The easy way to do this is to simply save the file with a different file name.

If the CLI (Command Line Interface) tab is missing for your network devices, go to Preferences -> Show/Hide and uncheck a few options.

3. Scoring with Activity Wizard

Once you’re happy with your topology, let’s make the magic happen!

Open up Activity Wizard.

Activity Wizard is located top left corner, 7th icon (wizard hat)

You’ll be greeted with a page that introduces you to Activity Wizard. Click on the Answer Network tab. There are dropdown menus for each device you have and for the network as a whole. Most of the checks are relatively obscure and don’t have documentation on what they do, so it’s mostly a process of trial-and-error. Check off all the items you want scored.

For example, to check the IP address of an end device like a PC or server, you have to go under the port (usually FastEthernet), and find the IP address check there. Also note that all checks are ordered strictly alphabetically which is good in most cases if you know what the setting is called.

Quick tip, routinely export the file as a .pka and open to check that the correct configurations do get scored.

You will need to set a password for the Activity Wizard so that later people doing the lab will not be able to change scoring. I don’t know of any way to recover this password if you forget it, so make sure to write it down.

If you go to Answer Network -> Settings, you can select how you want score and time elapsed to be displayed.

Answer Network, Settings

4. Making your initial network

Now we need to make the network that the user initially starts in when they open your lab. Generally, the best way to do this is to copy the initial network from your answer network, then modify the copy, but you can also create your initial network from scratch.

Click on the Copy from Answer Network button and you’ll see this.

Click yes and continue with the dialogue. Click into the starting network and start modifying configurations as you like.

On routers, you can run the following in privileged exec mode to erase the current configurations.

erase startup-config 
reload

Note that on switches, erasing the startup-config does not erase your VLANs. To erase your VLANs, run del vlan.datin privileged exec mode to delete the file where VLANs are stored.

To clear IP addresses on end devices like PC’s or servers, go to the IP Configuration tab, then click on DHCP and back to static.

For experienced lab-makers, you might want to try breaking configurations (mistyping commands, addresses, adding wrong configs) instead of simply erasing a device for a more realistic lab.

You have the ability to lock specific items for the user when they do the lab. For example, I commonly disable the ability to move devices around, add devices to the topology, and cable devices. I also sometimes disable the GUI (Graphical User Interface) aspect of network devices to force the use of the CLI.

5. Finishing up

Just a few things and we’re finished. Copy and paste the contents of your instruction document into an HTML editor (like this one) to get HTML code. Paste the code into the instructions tab of Activity Wizard and check that it renders exactly how you want it to.

For quality control, make sure you can get 100% completion or all of the scored configurations on your lab.

6. More fun things to try and summary

The servers on Packet Tracer can host actual websites with your own HTML code and presumably CSS.

You can put video embeds in your instructions but beware that any video Packet Tracer will try to play inside the window and the user will not be able to click out of the video to return to instructions. You could probably take advantage of this somehow :)

Thanks for making it all the way to the end!

Making Packet Tracer labs can really be a fun experience. If you’re looking into getting ahead of the competition in CyberPatriot or trying to develop skills for a Cisco certification, making labs is one of the stepping stones on your journey. I hope this helped!