Basic show commands on a Cisco IOS based switch

Show commands are used as one time commands to show various properties or pieces of information about the current configuration on a system. Before knowing the actual show commands, there are certain fundamental rules to keep in mind; first off, all commands use a command line interface similar to MS DOS. All commands have a distinctive phrase to start them off; in this case it is that show comes before any command you give. Operations and commands vary from device to device; in this instance we are using Catalyst 3500XL commands. Commands must be typed or copied into the interface; they can not be done by pressing a GUI.  Pressing the [enter] key after typing instructs the system to execute the command.

The following some basic show commands:
show running-config is used to show the memory status
show interfaces is used to display specific information about all interfaces
show interfaces <interface name> is used to display specific information about a particular interface
show ip is used to display the IP configuration of the switch
show Mac-address-table is used to show the MAC addresses of devices connected to the switch
show VLAN  is used to show the enabled VLANs statuses
show VLAN-membership is used to show the membership of VLANs on all ports
show spantree 1 is used to show complete information on the spanning tree protocol 1

Article written by MyComputerAid.com