Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
As you read this paragraph, you identify yourself as one of two types of people. The first
type of person sees the “Managing CME Using the Command Line” title and thinks,
“Fantastic! I love working in the command line—it's so flexible and customizable. Let's get
started!” The second type of person sees the same title and thinks, “I thought we moved
away from Microsoft DOS years ago. If you want to edit an autoexec.bat file, be my
guest. I'll opt for the point-and-click GUI.” If these two types of people met, they would
probably not enjoy each other's company and would most likely end up throwing com-
puter equipment at each other.
Note:
In most cases, the GUI-based administrator would win the initial confrontation;
however, the command-line administrator would later unleash a Denial of Service (DoS)
attack on the GUI-based administrator that would make up for any initial loss.
Thankfully, with the modern configuration tools supported by CME, both administrators
can peacefully coexist. Command-line administration still remains the most flexible and
supports all CME features. However, the GUI-based utilities, specifically the Cisco Con-
figuration Professional (CCP), have evolved enough to support simple configuration and
troubleshooting for the vast majority of CME features. In some cases, the configuration
performed using CCP is much more efficient than the using command-line administration.
With that said, troubleshooting typically lives in the command-line domain and each up-
coming sections presents a variety of
show
or
debug
commands that you can use to verify
or troubleshoot the operation of your CME router. To access the command-line interface
(CLI) of the CME router, use one of three methods:
Console port:
This how you initially configure the Cisco router before anyone has
assigned a management IP address to the device. You can access the console port us-
ing a serial interface on a desktop or laptop PC and a Cisco rollover cable with the
appropriate adapters.
■
Telnet access:
Since the 1970s, people have used Telnet to manage a variety of
command-line systems. The industry now considers Telnet to be an unsecure protocol
because it transmits data in clear text.
■
SSH access:
Secure Shell (SSH) performs the same function as Telnet but secures
communication with a heavy dose of encryption. All modern Cisco equipment sup-
ports SSH capabilities out of the box, whereas older Cisco equipment might need an
IOS upgrade to a security feature set.
■
Note:
The foundation IOS commands, such as
enable
,
configure terminal
, and
show
, are
covered in the CCENT and CCNA certification guides, which are a prerequisite for the
CCNA Voice certification. They are not covered here.
