Configuring banners on Cisco devices is very easy and it is a study material for CCNA. Even so, I found that not everybody is aware of the importance of the banners or know how banners can be used properly.
There are quite a lot of system banners that can be configured on a Cisco device, but today I will explain only the most used, or let’s say the most that I use, since this is a subjective choice. You will find below the banners name and a short explanation:
- banner motd – add a message-of-the-day (MOTD) banner; usually not so important, but in case of urgent maintenance work can be useful; when someone connects to the router, the MOTD banner appears before the login prompt
- banner exec – display a banner on terminals with an interactive EXEC; after the user successfully logs in to the router, the EXEC banner or incoming banner will be displayed
- banner login – when someone connects to the router, the MOTD banner (if configured) appears first, followed by the login banner and prompts; e.g. it can be useful to display a warning in case that you are not authorized to access the machine
- banner prompt-timeout – it display a message when the user is delaying a login above the definite period of time
If I forgot some very important banner or one that you find extremely useful please remind me to add it here or in another post. Please see below how to configure the system banners that I just described:
