SSH is the preferred protocol for remote communication with Cisco products. SSH is more secure than Telnet because all the data is sent with encryption.

To see if SSH in Cisco router or switch is enabled or not issue the following command:

Certhacker#show ip ssh

%SSH has not been enabled

You can see that SSH has not been enabled on the router or switch. To enable SSH do the following:

To generate RSA key pair to be used in SSH,

Go to global config mode and issue the following command

Certhacker(config)#crypto key generate rsa

To set the maximum number of login retries (Default is 5)

Certhacker(config)#ip ssh authentication-retries 5

To set the port for SSH (Default is 22)

Certhacker(config)#ip ssh port 9009

To enable SSH for all the virtual terminal lines

Certhacker(config)#line vty 0 4
Certhacker(config)# transport input ssh

Everything is done and SSH should be enabled. Now you can login to your router via SSH client.

To see if SSH in Cisco router or switch is enabled or not
issue the following command:

Certhacker#show ip ssh

Don’t forget to save the configuration if it is successful.

Certhacker#write memory