Video – Creating PDUs in Simulation Mode

Hello everyone. This is our CISCO Packet Tracer: Creating PDUs in Simulation Mode video. What does that
mean? That means we are going to be creating messages that will move between devices in this network. We're
going to be able to open up those messages and even view them.
So, what is a PDU? A PDU is a protocol data unit. It is a message type that is going to be transferring between
network devices. In previous videos, we've used CISCO Packet Tracer in real-time mode. As you see in the
bottom right corner, real-time mode is the default. It's right here with a clock on it. Today, we're going into
simulation mode. Simulation mode allows us to create PDUs and even view their content. So, let's get started in
simulation mode. First thing, to go into simulation mode you will click on the word Simulation with the stopwatch.
When we click on that we will see a simulation panel. This will give us event lists of traffic moving through our
network. We also have a Reset button to bring it back to the restart. We have a Constant Delay that is usually
checked by default. But we will uncheck it. We have a little slider down here where we control the speed of our
network data moving across the network. I like to increase it about two thirds up. We're going to have a go
backwards button in events, a go forwards button in events, or just a play and watch the traffic move. Now down
below we have this event list filters.
The first thing I'd like you to do is take that huge list that you see in front of you and click Show All None. This
takes all your events to nothing. We don't want to see any network traffic. But then we can click the Edit Filters
button. And when you click Edit Filters, you can see all the Packet Tracer traffic that we can watch. We've got
IPv4 traffic, IPv6 traffic, and miscellaneous. This is awesome. We're going to go to IPv4 and, today, we want to
watch ICMP traffic. So, we'll have ICMP traffic selected. We can close this little red box here. And now you'll see
your event list will be looking for ICMP. Now we'd like to see the actual traffic we're going to create. So in the
bottom right corner of Packet Tracer there's this little gray arrow; it's pointing to the left. Go ahead and click on
that and that'll expand a nice simulation pane for us.
So let's get started. Let's have some fun and actually create some traffic. So, if you take a look at your topology
here; we've got our PC, we've got a laptop. We're going to do some network traffic between those two. Up here,
right above the graphic, we have two envelopes; one that's closed and one that's open. If you highlight over the
closed envelope you'll see Add Simple PDU pop up. So, what we're going to do, we're going to create some traffic
using the Add Simple PDU button. When we click on the envelope, our cursor changes to an envelope. We will
now click on the PCU, which says, I am the source. We will click on the laptop, which says, this is the destination.
And you'll see immediately pop up on the event list: we have traffic at device, it's ICMP traffic. Down below we
actually see in our little event pane here in this simulation mode: in progress, source PC, destination laptop. So,
how do we make it move? Well, what you can do is either manually click on this forward button one by one by
one. Or we can click on the play button. Let's do it manually. We'll click on the forward button. The traffic goes
from the PC to the wireless router. We can watch it move. Click it again. Wireless router goes to the laptop.
Laptop is receiving the traffic. Hit the forward button again. The laptop has received the traffic. Awesome, another
laptop must respond. And click the forward button again. Keep going. There we go. Thank you laptop. And laptop
builds its response, sends that back to the wireless router, who then sends it back to the PC. Look at that, green
check mark. PC is happy. It's received its ping. If you look down here in the window of the bottom right corner we
see Successful. The PC has successfully pinged the laptop and gotten a response. Awesome. What we're going
to do now is click the Reset Simulation button and it goes back to the initial stage of the ping. If you didn't want to
use that forward button, this is where you can just click the play and you can just watch the traffic move on its
own. There's a little bit of delay between the steps and you can use your slider down here to control that speed.
Again, watching the traffic as it's working between the PC, wireless router, laptop. Laptop back to the router, back
to the PC, and again, green check mark. To stop the process from happening, you can click the play button again
so it's no longer blue, and it goes back to where you're at. If you hit Reset Simulation, it resets it all over again. So
that's awesome! But it's just a ping.
What if you wanted more complicated traffic. Well, we can send other messages. First thing we're going to do is
use this Delete button, down here next to this pane, and that'll get rid of the entire ping. It's gone. The ping never
existed. What we want to do next is let's create a more complex PDU. And if you go back above your topology

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Video – Creating PDUs in Simulation Mode

graphic of your network, and you hover over the open envelope, we'll see Add Complex PDU. Here we get
options. So click on that envelope. And now we get our envelope icon. We'll click on the PC just like last time. And
whoah, look at that! We automatically have a new window popping up. That's interesting. And inside of here, it
says destination address, source address, TTL, TOS, sequence number, you name it. What we want to do next is
click on the laptop. And when I click on the laptop, you'll see it auto filled in the destination IP which is the IP on
the laptop. The source is the PC which is the PC's port. It auto selected that for us. Now we could just send a ping
like before, but hit that dropdown menu and take a look at all the different type of traffic we can send using this
Complex PDU button. This is awesome! So if you wanted to send, for example, a SFTP; secure file transfer
protocol, you could do it. If you want to send an email message using SMTP or receiving it through POP3, you
can do it. This is awesome. If you want to simulate TELNET traffic or TFTP, you could do it. If we left the default
of PING, and we again, we need this destination IP address; we just click on the laptop. Source IP address we
don't need because it's coming from that source PC already which is already selected. We'll go into the sequence
number; give ourselves an initial sequence number. How 'bout two. Size; you can change the size of your ping
message. We can make it 10. Down below we have the timers. We can say one-shot which is just right now, one
time. Or periodic interval. With periodic interval I can say send this ping every five seconds. From there, I can click
the Create PDU button and check it out. We'll see it right here in the event list. It's at the device of PC. It's an
ICMP message. Down below, we can see the source is PC, destination is going to be the address of the laptop.
All I have to do is go ahead and click play. And now this custom built message moves from the PC to the router,
router to the laptop, and of course so forth just like before. If you don't want to see it step by step, you can always
just uncheck that play button and you can move it manually with that forward button just like we saw previously.
And guess what? That ping? Awesome. If I hit the play button, remember, every five seconds this thing's going to
keep moving, going through my network, verifying connectivity on a periodic interval timer of five seconds. I love
it! That's awesome. See it started again, right there at five. And it just continues going.
So have some fun with this. With CISCO Packet Tracer, it doesn't end here. You can make this as complicated as
you want or as easy as you want. Reset the simulation mode using that Reset button. This starts us from the
beginning again. You can delete this message like we saw before. Create a new one. Have fun with it and learn.
Please make sure you play with the PDU creation and being able to test out connectivity, because the next video,
we're going into the viewing of the contents of these PDU messages and we're going to take a closer look at the
data actually inside them.

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