First, we need to download the Raspberry Pi OS image, which you can get from this link:  Raspberry Pi Operating system images. We're going to use the Raspberry Pi OS Lite version for these steps, but, you can also use the full Desktop versions as well. Download the image and get ready for the next step.

Now, we need flash the image to the Micro SD Card. Let's use Etcher, which is an open source tool for creating bootable drives and is available on Windows, Mac and Linux! You can get official information and download Etcher from this link: Official Etcher information and Download.

After you've installed Etcher

1. Open Etcher and click Flash from file, which will open a file explorer window.
2. Then, click on the operating system image that you downloaded, and then click Open to move on. 
3. Now, we can see that we have the image picked and ready to be flashed onto the SD Card, so go ahead and click Flash! to begin. 
4. Flash Complete! Great, now let's close out of Etcher, and get ready for the next step.

Now that we've finished flashing the image to the card we need to give the Raspberry Pi instructions to use SSH (Secure Shell) automatically when it boots up.

Secure Shell is a network protocol that will allow us to remotely access the Raspberry Pi Command Line Interface (CLI). This is very helpful for our initial setup, and can be used to access the Pi on a regular basis without having to set the Pi up with a mouse, keyboard and monitor.

We'll be using PowerShell here as the program is likely already installed on your Windows computer.

1. Open Windows PowerShell, and enter New-Item .\Desktop\ssh into the terminal. This will create a blank file named "ssh", on your Desktop view which we'll copy over to the card.
   

   Note

   For macOS and Linux, open up a Terminal window, and enter sudo nano Desktop/ssh. This will open up a blank file for editing on the Desktop. Press Ctrl and X to save and exit. This will put a blank file named ssh without a file extension on your Desktop view.

2. Copy the file on to the card, which will run on boot up and enable SSH automatically.
   

The next thing that we need to do is to edit the cmdline.txt file on the Micro SDCard itself. This will let us create a special IP address for the Raspberry Pi to make setup easier. Here's how:

1. Open up the SD Card, and right click on the cmdline.txt file and choose Open. This will open up your default text editing program where we can edit the file. For this example, we're using NotePad on Windows.
2. You'll see a string of text at the top which we should leave as it is. Go down to the next line, and type in ip=raspberrypi.local. Then, save and close the document.

Now, we are ready to communicate with the Raspbery Pi using ssh! We're going to use PowerShell on Windows, and the default terminal on macOS and Linux to get this job done. There are many other ssh clients available such as PuTTY and Termius, and more. You may want to take some time later to find the best program for you.

1. Open PowerShell, and enter ssh pi@raspberrypi.local into the terminal.
2. A message will pop up stating that the authenticity of the host can't be established. This is normal when you try to make a new connection, and will happen the first time you connect to the Raspberry Pi.
3. You'll be asked if you want to continue connecting. Type yes into the terminal, and press enter. This will add the Raspberry Pi to the list of known hosts for your computer.
4. Finally, type the default password in which is raspberry and press enter to login. (NOTE - the password won't actually show up here for security)

Now that you're logged in you can start using your Raspberry Pi! Here's a few suggestions of things you'll likely want to do to complete your setup:

• Change your password. Enter passwd into the terminal (no, that's not a typo!). This command will let us change our password. NOTE - by default, you will not see the password characters as you type.
  1. You'll be asked to enter the current password, which is raspberry
  2. Then, enter a new password, you'll have to re-type it to make sure it matches. Once you have a match you'll have successfully changed the password
• Use the Raspi-Config tool for further system setup. Enter sudo raspi-config into the terminal and you will be taken to the Raspberry Pi Software Configuration Tool menu.
• Edit the cmdline.txt file if you'd like so you can use an actual IP address. Enter sudo nano /boot/cmdline.txt into the terminal. Delete the line that says ip=raspberrypi.local, or comment it out by putting a # before the line, like this, #ip=raspberrypi.local This will change the color of the text and comment it out, or essentially disabling it without having to delete. Then, press Ctrl and x at the same time to save and exit the file.
• Set a static IP address. You may want to set a static IP address that doesn't change, which will make it easy to identify your Raspberry Pi. Enter sudo nano /etc/dhcpcd.conf into the terminal which will open the configuration file for our Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) settings. Follow the sample instructions in the file to create static information for your Raspberry Pi.

An Iperf test will help us test the network throughput of the connection to see where our speeds rate. We see an average of 94.5mbps for download speeds, and 94mbps for upload speeds. These results were taken from a 2-minute test registering the speed at every second, which is definitely on target for 10/100mbps! Here's a handy chart for visualization. 

If you'd like more information on setting up an Iperf test of your own please see our blog post about Understanding and Troubleshooting Network Performance.