Friday, 8 May 2015

CISCO NPE or LAN base image

NPE = No Payload Encryption. It means that you can't encrypt the traffic passing through the router but otherwise have full functionality (of course based on the version of the image). The only encryption related features you have are management protocols such as SSH or SNMPv3 encryption etc.

LAN base = this is only for switches and means that you have no layer 3 functionality - only layer 2 features are supported. For instance, you have no routing protocol support at all, and you can't even enable IP routing.

if you bay a layer 3 switch (such as a Catalyst 3750-X) with LAN Base, you won't get any use of its Layer 3 capabilites, but you can always buy the necessary license to activate the layer 3 features at a later time.

IP base builds on the LAN base image. It has all features of LAN base plus the additional Layer 3 features.

Changing between LAN Base and IP Base depends on the platform. On some platforms, you simply copy the IP Base image to the switch and reload the switch with that image (typically you'll see this referred to as "Right To Use"). On other platforms, the feature set is enforced through license keys. You use the same universal image for all feature sets. When the switch is booting up, it checks the installed licenses and only activates the feature sets you have license to use.

In both cases, you need to purchase a LAN Base to IP Base upgrade.

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