Cisco IOS in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference for IOS on IP Networks - Softcover

Boney, James

Softcover

ISBN 10: 156592942X ISBN 13: 9781565929425

Publisher: O'Reilly Media, 2001

Synopsis

Routers are the glue that holds the Internet together, and Cisco Systems--holding roughly 70% of the market--is the most prominent router manufacturer. Cisco's routers come in all shapes and sizes and almost all of them, from the smallest to the largest, run the IOS operating system. IOS is an extremely powerful and complex operating system, with an equally complex configuration language. There are many commands, with many options, and if one thing is configured incorrectly, the entire company could find itself offline.Cisco IOS in a Nutshell covers IOS configuration for the TCP/IP protocol family. The book is divided into two parts: the first part includes chapters on the user interface, configuring lines and interfaces, access lists, routing protocols, and dial-on-demand routing and security; the second part is a classic O'Reilly-style quick reference to all the commands that you need to work with TCP/IP, including the lower-level protocols on which it relies, and lots of examples of the most commonly encountered configuration steps for the routers themselves.

About this title

Review:

Three cheers for the Nutshell format! There may be no better printed style for command-line environments, like the Internetwork Operating System (IOS) that runs on Cisco Systems routers. Cisco IOS in a Nutshell documents the most important bits of the frequently arcane IOS command line from aaa accounting to write, thereby providing a valuable resource to everyone who works with IOS. The reference section--which makes up about 60 percent of this book--summarizes each command (again, they're not all covered, but the ones that aren't are pretty obscure) with a statement of its scope (global, interface, line, or whatever), followed by generalized syntax summaries in the style of Unix man pages (these indicate the legal combinations of switches and parameters). Then, a detailed discussion of each switch and parameter clarifies what each is for. The whole reference section is alphabetical, with lettered dark boxes on the pages' outer edges that are easy to scan while flipping pages rapidly.

Prior to the reference section, the author explains how the IOS interface refers to and controls aspects of routers, such as lines and interfaces. He does a great job of it, too--you could do far worse than to read his explanations before going to work under IOS for the first time. The other great value of this early section is in the author's discussion of how to configure a new router by bringing interfaces, data-communication protocols (like TCP/IP), routing protocols (like Border Gateway Protocol, or BGP), and services like Domain Name Service (DNS) online. This book is a tremendous value for Cisco engineers. --David Wall

Topics covered: How to configure a Cisco Systems router with the Internetwork Operating System (IOS). The most popular commands are documented, and there's a tutorial section that familiarizes readers with the Cisco way of thinking about a router's work. The author uses IOS 12.x as his baseline, though users of older versions will find his work valuable.

About the Author:

Jim Boney has worked at Chesapeake Computer Consultants, Inc. for the last eight years as a consultant specializing in a wide variety of subjects: network design, network management, Unix administration, and programing in various languages (Perl, Java, Tcl/Tk, and C/C++). For the last three years, he has been working on the vLab project, which allows complete access to Cisco routers over the Internet. Jim lives in Pasadena, Maryland with his wife Peggy.

About this edition

• Publisher: O'Reilly Media
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 156592942X
• ISBN 13: 9781565929425
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 608