Learning to configure your Cisco devices from the Command Line Interface (CLI) is an essential step towards your Cisco networking career.
This means that you need to learn how to configure the Cisco IOS operating system which runs on routers, switches and other network devices.
Acquiring this hands-on experience with the Cisco IOS CLI will help you enormously in your network administration tasks or even for certification exams.
In this post I’m providing some useful keyboard shortcuts that you can use when configuring a Cisco device via command line. These shortcuts are sometimes asked in CCNA certification exam questions.
|
Keyboard Shortcut |
Action |
| Up Arrow | Particularly useful. It displays your previous commands. Pressing the up arrow repeatedly will show all previous commands typed (command history) |
| TAB Key | Particularly useful. It completes a partially typed CLI command. E.g if you type “show run” and press TAB, it will complete the command as “show running-config“ |
| CTRL+Z | Takes you back to Privileged EXEC Mode. E.g if you are in Global Config Mode Router(config)# and press CTRL+Z it will take you back to Router# mode |
| CTRL+A | Places the cursor at the beginning of a line |
| CTRL+E | Places the cursor at the end of a line |
| CTRL+R | Redisplays the current command line |
| CTRL+W | Erases a word (behind the cursor) |
| CTRL+U | Erases an entire line |
| Ctrl+P | Show Previous command |
| Ctrl+N | Next command |
| Ctrl+Shift+6 + X | Quit from a Telnet session |
The above are the most useful and most frequently used shortcuts. There are many more but if you learn the ones above is more than enough.
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