Cisco Systems 3750E manual Default System Name and Prompt Configuration, Configuring a System Name

Chapter 7 Administering the Switch

Configuring a System Name and Prompt

For complete syntax and usage information for the commands used in this section, see the Cisco IOS Configuration Fundamentals Command Reference, Release 12.2 and the Cisco IOS IP Command Reference, Volume 2 of 3: Routing Protocols, Release 12.2.

These sections contain this configuration information:

•Default System Name and Prompt Configuration, page 7-15

•Configuring a System Name, page 7-15

•Understanding DNS, page 7-15

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	Purpose
Step 1
	configure terminal	Enter global configuration mode.
Step 2
	hostname name	Manually configure a system name.
		The default setting is switch.
		The name must follow the rules for ARPANET hostnames. 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.
Step 3
	end	Return to privileged EXEC mode.
Step 4
	show running-config	Verify your entries.
Step 5
	copy running-config startup-config	(Optional) Save your entries in the configuration file.

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 hostnames to IP addresses. When you configure DNS on your switch, you can substitute the hostname 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.

Catalyst 3750-E and 3560-E Switch Software Configuration Guide

OL-9775-02 7-15