Cisco Command Christmas Calendar #6: banner motd

This is a special one. It's my home country Finland's 100th birthday today, and we're going to configure a congratulatory banner message in honor of that. The banner motd command is used to define and enable a message-of-the-day (MOTD) banner. The command syntax is banner motd d message d, where d  is the delimiting character (the pound sign [#], for example, and it cannot be used in the message).

This MOTD banner is displayed to all terminals connected and is useful for sending messages that affect all users (such as impending system shutdowns). When a user connects to the router, the MOTD banner appears before the login prompt. There are also other types of banners, like the EXEC banner or incoming banner, which will be displayed after the user logs in to the router, depending on the type of connection.

Let's configure a celebratory MOTB banner for Finland's 100th birthday, using the percentage sign (%) as a delimiting character.

SW1(config)#banner motd %
Enter TEXT message.  End with the character '%'.


                                   .''.       
       .''.      .        *''*    :_\/_:     . 
      :_\/_:   _\(/_  .:.*_\/_*   : /\ :  .'.:.'.
  .''.: /\ :   ./)\   ':'* /\ * :  '..'.  -=:o:=-
 :_\/_:'.:::.    ' *''*    * '.\'/.' _\(/_'.':'.'
 : /\ : :::::     *_\/_*     -= o =-  /)\    '  *
  '..'  ':::'     * /\ *     .'/.\'.   '
      *            *..*         :
       *
        *

___________.__       .__                     .___  ___________  _______    ._.
\_   _____/|__| ____ |  | _____    ____    __| _/ /_   \   _  \ \   _  \   | |
 |    __)  |  |/    \|  | \__  \  /    \  / __ |   |   /  /_\  \/  /_\  \  | |
 |     \   |  |   |  \  |__/ __ \|   |  \/ /_/ |   |   \  \_/   \  \_/   \  \|
 \___  /   |__|___|  /____(____  /___|  /\____ |   |___|\_____  /\_____  /  __
     \/            \/          \/     \/      \/              \/       \/   \/

                                   .''.       
       .''.      .        *''*    :_\/_:     . 
      :_\/_:   _\(/_  .:.*_\/_*   : /\ :  .'.:.'.
  .''.: /\ :   ./)\   ':'* /\ * :  '..'.  -=:o:=-
 :_\/_:'.:::.    ' *''*    * '.\'/.' _\(/_'.':'.'
 : /\ : :::::     *_\/_*     -= o =-  /)\    '  *
  '..'  ':::'     * /\ *     .'/.\'.   '
      *            *..*         :
       *
        *
%
SW1(config)#

This is how it will appear to the device connecting to SW1.

Cisco documentation: banner motd