You are on page 1of 5

Cisco 3825 router

with integrated
VPN

Different IOS types, releases and fixes


There are 3 different types of IOS here. There is the standard IOS you have
been dealing with in R&S, then there is the IOS XR, a realtime OS designed for
the much higher end carrier routing platforms (CRS-1, CRS-3, ASR9000 and
XR12000). It is way more stable and is equipped with advanced features such as
process mirroring and advanced features. You need to explicitly "commit"in
order for a command to make changes.
And there is also the IOS XE, which is primarily for the Cisco ASR/Catalyst
4500E platforms. In fact, all the IOS functions in the XE are provided by a
daemon named IOSD (officially, in IOS XE the IOS runs as a single daemon
within Linux). According to Cisco, IOS XE looks and feels the same as the
traditional IOS and there is almost no change in feature configurations. NX-OS
is for storage and is more relevant for datacenter operations.

56

Fixes for the standard IOS are usually classified into:


Maintenance releases, which are heavily tested and highly recommended.
Rebuild, which has been constructed from the previous maintenance or major
release, has the fix for a specific vulnerability. It receives less testing but it
contains minimal changes necessary to effect the repair.
Interim releases, which were built at regular intervals between maintenance
releases. They also receive less testing and should be selected only when you do
not have better alternatives.
Before IOS release 15, IOS releases are split into multiple different trains. T is
technology train, which gets new features and fixes throughout its life. S is
Service Provider train, which is only for the core router products. E is
Enterprise train, which is customized for enterprise environments. B is
broadband train, which offers many internet based broadband features. Starting
with IOS release 15, there is only one train - the M/T train.
More on IOS XR and its commands
Basic access to physical console and auxiliary port is possible. And there are also
dedicated physical management interfaces. For example, on the ASR9000 you
can have interface MgntEth0/RSP0/CPU0/0 and MgntEth0/RSP0/CPU0/1.
If you need to have IP management access, you should first configure these
interfaces with IPs from your management subnet (you may use physical or
virtual IPs).
In terms of prompt structure, RP means route processor, 0 means single rack
chassis (or some other values in a multishelf system), RSP0 or RSP1 means
Route Switch Processor (also indicates the slot), CPU0 or CPU1 points to the
module, and then there is the router hostname (IOS is the default).
57

An ASR 9000 RSP.

You do not need to deal with things like startup-config or running-config on


IOS XR. To set up things, you first make a collection of changes to the current
configuration, then you consider to commit the configuration via the commit
command. You may also use commit best-effort to commit all configuration
that can be committed. To commit and add comments together, use commit
comment. You may even use commit replace to replace or remove the entire
running configuration. If you use the exit command before committing
anything, this message will show up: Uncommitted changes found, commit
them before exiting(yes/no/cancel)?
You use show config to show the uncommitted configuration, or use show
config merge to show the expected future configuration after commit. To avoid
configuration collisions along the configuration process you can use the
configure exclusive command to enter into an exclusive mode which locks out
all other users from entering configuration changes.
You use sh run int to look into the running config on an interface. To retrieve
and show the current system time and interface, use pwd. To switch to a
particular interface, use int. To add a new IP address to the current interface,
use ip add or ipv6 add.
Routing protocol configuration in both IOS and IOS XR are highly similar in
concept but a little bit different in syntaxes.
58

In terms of RIP:
You use auto-summary to enable the automatic summarization of subnet
routes into network-level routes.
You use broadcast-for-v2 to send output packets to a broadcast address.
You use clear rip to clean up entries and statistics. You use clear rip
database to clean up only the relevant database entries from the topology
table, or use clear rip interface to remove the relevant interface-related
information. And you may use clear rip statistics to clear up the relevant
statistics.
You use default-metric to set the default metric values for routes that are
redistributed from other protocols.
You use distance to define the administrative distance assigned to routes
that have been discovered.
You use interface to define the interfaces on which the protocol runs.
You use maximum-paths to specify the max number of equal cost parallel
routes that can be installed into the routing table.
You use neighbor to define the neighboring router with which to exchange
protocol information.
You use nsf to set up nonstop forwarding after a RIP process shutdown.
The main goal of NSF is to continue forwarding packets after route
processor switchover (to be precise, a Stateful Switchover).
In terms of EIGRP:

59

You may enable an IPv4 or IPv6 address family via the address-family
command.
You may authenticate EIGRP protocol traffic on interfaces based on the
MD5 algorithm via the authentication keychain command.
You may allow the automatic summarization of subnet routes into networklevel routes via the autosummary command.
You may configure the percentage of bandwidth that can be used on an
interface, use the bandwidth-percent command.
You may clean up and then re-establish EIGRP neighbor entries via clear
eigrp neighbors. To clean up topology entires, use clear eigrp topology.
To set the default metrics, you want to use the defaultmetric command.
To use one of the two administrative distances so to provide a better route,
you want to use the distance command.
To set the hello interval for a particular interface, you want to use the hellointerval command.
To set the hold time for an interface, you want to use the hold-time
command.
To define the interfaces on which the protocol runs, you want to use the
interface command.
To define the maximum number of parallel routes to be supported, you
want to use the maximum-paths command.
Review Questions:
1, Which OSI layer is responsible for presenting the data in standard formats?
60

You might also like