•Console – A physical management port used to access a device in order to provide maintenance, such as performing the initial configurations.

•Secure Shell (SSH) – Establishes a secure remote CLI connection to a device, through a virtual interface, over a network. (Note: This is the recommended method for remotely connecting to a device.)

•Telnet – Establishes an insecure remote CLI connection to a device over the network. (Note: User authentication, passwords and commands are sent over the network in plaintext.)

•Terminal emulation programs are used to connect to a network device by either a console port or by an SSH/Telnet connection.

•There are several terminal emulation programs to chose from such as PuTTY, Tera Term and SecureCRT.