You need to buy a license at Cisco.
Purchased Cisco licenses are all registered to a smart account since a couple of years. And the actual licenses are added to the smart account < inventory < licenses tab.
But if correct you can (in the license portal) choose to continue with traditional licensing, or like I said before you choose to add the license to the your smart account/inventory so you can run a smart licensing image on the router and connect your router with the help of the token generated in your smart account / virtual account.
So you should still be able to order a license, you will receive a salesorder/PDF with on this a PAK key with pin code, which can be used to generate a license file by using the router UDI info inside the license portal (traditional licensing)
Like said before since a couple of years that license (with PAK key) is registered to your cco/smart account/virtual account, so other people using other cco/smart accounts can not use that PAK key, this since the PAK key is not associated with their cco/smart/virtual accounts. (makes sense in relation to Cisco list price discount, not all customers pay the same for a ISR4331/K9 for example)
Since around mid 2020 Cisco catalyst switches like 3650 and 3850 and Cisco routers like ISR4k (and some other series/platforms) started to ship from factory with pre-installed XE-OS IOS software that forces you to use smart licensing. XE-OS 16.9 or higher introduced this change for Catalyst switches like the 3850 and 3650 series, and 16.10.1a or higher introduced this change for the routers like ASR1k and ISR4k series.
There are exceptions, we seen on some products from end 2020 or beginning 2021 that they still have a license file, but the majority of devices from mid 2020 or later date come without any permanent license. Not even IPBASE.
While the router still functions with this lowest IPBASE feature set(so it has the basic routing functionality), it will show exactly what you see, there is no permanent license at all. If correct you also had the "no valid license found" message in the bootstrap messages when the router just booted up?
So when people decide to use that ISR4k router with 16.9.8 software (they downgrade the router) you will see that there is no permanent license.
From the Cisco serial number you can see what factory/country and what year and what week the router was produced:
Your router:
- FDO2543M2YG - I am pretty sure it is made in China (not sure about the factory)
- Manufactured in the year 2021 (25-4=21=2021)
- Manufactured in week 43
So I am pretty sure your router was shipped with 16.10.1a or higher XE-OS IOS software when it left the manufacturer and got packed. Hence when someone downgraded this router you will notice that there is no permanent IPBASE license on the unit.
First end-user buyer who bought the router (should have I guess) received this IPBASE perpetual license in his/her smart account/virtual account, you will find the Cisco license portal here: https://software.cisco.com/
Image of the Smart software manager:
You should try to reinstall 16.10.1a (if it perhaps is still on the flash) and generate a token in your own smart account and connect the router to your own smart / virtual account (you can create a CCO account for free, I guess the guest account option has to be chosen) When you go to the license portal section while logged in your account, you choose the smart software licensing (CSSM) option and you can create one or more virtual accounts.
In the virtual account at the General tab you can create your token which you insert on your router together with some other configuration to connect your router to the smart / virtual account.
Just try and see what happens, since the IPBASE is normally always included as base option when purchasing routers, so I am not sure what happens when you connect your router to the smart account.
