Around 2015, Cisco made Cisco Packet Tracer available to all, directly from Cisco. Before that, you had to be enrolled in a Cisco Networking Academy course. Then Cisco created some short, free, self-paced courses, available to all – and if you signed up for the course, you could download Cisco Packet Tracer. So that’s the path today to get legitimate up-to-date Cisco Packet Tracer code.

The details of how to register and how to find the download links change occasionally. Generally, you first create a free login with the Cisco Networking Academy and then enroll in a free course about Cisco Packet Tracer. From there, if you look around or just read/listen to the first bit of the course, you will find the download link.

As of early 2022, the process works like this:

1. Open a browser to www.netacad.com.
2. Click to list all courses and choose “Packet Tracer.”
3. Next page, click to view all Packet Tracer courses. This brings you to the www.skillsforall.com web portal.
4. Enroll in the “Getting Started with Packet Tracer.” It will prompt you for information and set up a login if you do not have one already.

You should now be enrolled in the Cisco Network Academy Packet Tracer Course when finished. Bookmark the www.skillsforall.com web portal to quickly return to the course at any time, or just click the button below.

If you have just finished enrolling, you can begin the following steps on the page where you finished the previous steps. However, if you need to find your way to a good starting point for the next steps:

1. If not already there, reach the “Introduction to Packet Tracer” course page by:
   1. Navigating to the  https://www.skillsforall.com site, which is the Academy learning portal.
   2. Launching the “Introduction to Packet Tracer” course.

From there, follow these steps to download PT. Note that these steps change from time to time, so if the steps do not match the page any longer, just keep looking. Everyone who enrolls in this course needs to download Packet Tracer, so the pages should make the download process clear.

1. Take the course from the first page.
2. Look for any notes about lab resources, labs, or Packet Tracer.
3. Those notes should list the download links.
4. Download Cisco Packet Tracer for your platform: Navigate through the menus to find the latest version of PT for your OS. The correct filenames should end with:
   1. Windows:
   2. Linux:
   3. MacOS:

Once downloaded, you just need to install the software as with any other desktop app. In most cases, just double-click the file and follow the prompts.

In some rare instances, the installation process works, and you can open the downloaded .pkt file… but then you cannot access the CLI of the network devices. Test to ensure you can access the CLI as a final test, as follows, assuming you just completed the previous step.

1. At the end of the previous steps, you should have the Packet Tracer app started with the .pkt open, displaying a network topology.
2. Click on the router icon.
3. In the next window, click the CLI tab to display the CLI window.
4. Click inside the window and press enter to make the simulated router respond.
5. Type the enable command and press enter.
6. Then type the show running-config command and press enter. This command displays the current configuration on the device.

If you cannot navigate through the CLI steps, you likely have experienced this obscure issue with the PT install. Repeat the installation steps to re-install PT and test again.

I teach courses at learning.oreilly.com, sometimes using Packet Tracer in class. For those classes, the course enrollment page should tell you:

• The minimum Packet Tracer version to have installed and tested before class.
• A link to a test Packet Tracer .pkt file to test with to confirm you are ready for class.

Check the course enrollment page for your course for those details. Here’s a sample process from the CCNA Deep Dive course series.

1. Click the button above to download the “CCNA Deep Dive Test.pkt” file.
2. Start the Cisco Packet Tracer application.
3. Note that PT should ask you to supply login information. This should be the same username/password you used when enrolling in the Academy PT course. It is also your login to cisco.com (again, free).
4. Once started, you should see the PT app, but the middle of the window should have no device icons in it.
5. Use File… Open from PT’s top menu to open the file you just downloaded. After doing so, the window should display a single router icon in the middle of the window.

If the file opens, you have proved you can download and open .pkt files for class.