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kadsteph
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Cisco Employee


Overview

Naming Convention Consistency

The whole point of having any naming convention for something is to keep things consistent and uniform. Having a convention to follow provides ground rules for professionals to stick to what’s known, to provide clear and concise information for present-day and future employees and those who work with Cisco products.

This article provides a general overview of the Cisco IOS Naming Convention for Cisco Routing Platforms, including IOS XE releases 3S, 16, and 17 and IOS Classic releases 15M&T, 15S, and 15 Special and Early Deployments. 


IOS XE

Cisco IOS XE Software Releases 16 and 17

IOS XE opened up a new world, starting with Denali, by offering more visibility into user, application, and device behavior. The benefit of IOS XE is the advantage of providing a single operating system for enterprise, wired and wireless access, aggregation, core, and Wide Access Networks.

The following are the different trains of Cisco IOS XE 16 and 17 releases and their ranges: 

  • Cupertino 17.7 → 17.9
  • Bengaluru 17.4 → 17.6
  • Amsterdam 17.1 → 17.3
  • Gibraltar 16.10 → 16.12
  • Fuji 16.7 → 16.9
  • Everest 16.4 → 16.6
  • Denali 16.1 → 16.3

 

IOS XE Software Release 3S

IOS XE Version 3S is optimized for compact routers at the network edge, like the Cisco ASR 900 and 1000 Series.

The following are the different trains of Cisco 3S release and their ranges

  • 3.1S → 3.18S

  • 3.18SP

 

IOS XE Train Identifiers

In the below image, our “train” here is the name Bengaluru, and this will be different as we take a look at IOS Classic later on in this article.

We have a major release of "17", a release version of "6", and it is the first rebuild.

There is also an “a”, which is an optional special release identifier. This lowercase letter will be present when there’s specific support for a hardware platform or there are fixes for a select set of defects. An example where you would use this special release notation is when the major release came out, but there is now a hardware platform that wasn’t initially available from that release.

“ED” here is the type of deployment and means “Early Deployment”. There are also General and Limited deployments as well.

IOS Naming Convention.jpg

 

Physical Platforms

Moving on to some inspections of Cisco image filenames, we see that the platform name is indicated right in the front, being that this is the Catalyst 8500 Series Edge Platform. 

“aep” means Aggregation Edge Platforms. Another possible placement here is “be”, meaning Branch Edge.

Next, is an identifier letting us know the services provided by this image. In this case “universal” means that this image offers all the IOS features supported by the C8500 Series Edge Platforms. Other examples of what could be placed here could be “NFVIS” or “adventerprise” just to name a couple.

Following, “k9” represents that this is a cryptographic image.

We can see the full version release of 17.05.1a.

Maybe you’ve seen the letters “SPA” in a Cisco filename before, I won’t get into the detailed information here, as I have what these values mean in the attached references, but basically “S” means it is digitally signed software, “P” stands for production, and “A” is the key version which is alphabetical. So, it could also be B, C, D, and so on.

Then, lastly, followed by the file extension type of .bin.

IOS_Naming Convention2.jpg

On this ASR 1000 series router image there are two new elements: the IOSd version identifier and the release type.

We can see that the version for IOSd is 15.5 The “d” in IOSd stands for daemon. A daemon is a Linux program that executes in the background ready to perform an operation when it’s required. This is software that incorporates the routing protocol functionality of Cisco IOS software and is essentially Cisco IOS software code that runs as a separate process on a device.

The release type here, “ext”, which means the image contains an extended maintenance release of 3.10S.

IOS_Naming Convention2.jpg

 

Virtual Platforms

The CSR 1000V is a virtual platform.

“Serial” here signifies that this image is a serial image, meaning if you want a serial connection for the OpenStack dashboard you need this image type.

“qcow2” is the storage format that is used for virtual disks. 

IOS_Naming Convention2.jpg

 

 

 

 

IOS Classic

Cisco IOS Software Release 15

The 15M&T Cisco IOS software provides functionality and hardware support for enterprise, access, and commercial networks and it incorporates features that were previously introduced in versions 12.4T and 12.4 trains. Here, M stands for "Extended Maintenance" release and the T stands for "Standard Maintenance" release.

Next, is 15S, which was introduced to provide functionality for Cisco’s 7200, 7300, and 7600 series routers. 

Cisco IOS 15 also has a section for Special and Early developments, but these trains were intended to be short-lived and got integrated into the 15M&T train.

The following are the different trains of Cisco IOS releases and their ranges: 

  • 15M&T
  • 15S
  • 15 Special and Early Deployments

 

IOS Classic Train Identifier

Before Cisco incorporated names like Bengaluru, Fuji, and others, the Train was signified by a particular number. Although it may be a bit self-explanatory, you can think of a Train as the “major” version of the release. This number sets the foundation for the IOS feature set. The “T” here is also part of the Train and means the release is a Standard release, as mentioned previously.

The throttle is second, and it signifies a “minor" version, where some new features and bug fixes may have been added. New features are normally not released during a throttle, what you would call “mid-throttle”, and must wait for a new throttle to be started before they are included.

A rebuild number typically signifies where some bug fixes would occur. Rebuilds can have a number convention, an alphabetical, lowercase letter convention, or even a mix of both.

These three attributes make up a Cisco IOS Release version, but as you’ll see soon this can be expanded on to provide more detailed information to the user when looking at IOS images.

IOS_Naming Convention2.jpg

 

Physical Platforms

Taking an image name from the 1900 Series ISR’s, we can view some added on information.

First, we see that the platform name is indicated right in the front.

Next, is the universal identifier we talked about previously.

Following, “k9” represents that this is a cryptographic image.

“npe” stands for no payload encryption.

“mz” indicates that the version of the IOS image runs from RAM and the IOS file is compressed.

The digital signature SPA, as we previously discussed.

The IOS version is in here as well, being 15.7.3

M is the release type, again, meaning that it is an Extended Maintenance Release.

There is also an included maintenance rebuild number.

And .bin is the file format type for the image.

IOS_Naming Convention2.jpg

 

Resources

There have been others that have contributed to the explanation of Cisco's IOS naming convention, and I have cited my sources in the slide deck at the end of this article. I have also included additional examples, feature-set definitions, and deployment definitions for your reference. At the bottom of this posting, you can find this deck labeled "IOS_Naming Convention.pdf".

There is also a video on this subject, that I have done, that provides more detailed information: Cisco IOS and IOS XE Naming Conventions for Routing Platforms

 

Featured 
Speaker
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Kadin Stephens is a Technical Marketing Engineer currently on the Software-Defined Access (SDA) Solution Team. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, and is CCNA certified (CSCO14045242).
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kadsteph
Cisco Employee
Cisco Employee

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