CCNA Foundations Day 2: Static Routing Between Branches

Archive lab

Deploy IP addressing and bidirectional static routing across a three-router topology to connect two branch LANs through an HQ hop. Practice verification from end hosts, analyze routing tables, and troubleshoot asymmetric reachability.

Learning objectives

• Assign and verify correct interface IP addresses and subnet masks on routers and hosts.
• Configure static routes that provide end-to-end LAN connectivity across multiple hops.
• Explain and demonstrate why routing must be bidirectional for return traffic to succeed.
• Verify forwarding decisions with routing tables and traceroute.
• Troubleshoot one-way reachability caused by missing or incorrect static routes.

Troubleshooting focus

• Verify every link's interface status and IP addressing (`show ip interface brief`) and correct any interface that is down or misaddressed.
• Confirm each device's running configuration matches the lab objective, and bring any interface, route, or service that is not in its expected state back to health.
• Trace end-to-end reachability with ping/traceroute and isolate the first hop where forwarding fails.