Firstly I will point out that this series of blog entries has nothing to do with Apple’s OSX operating system build for the iPhone retrospectively named iOS; these are about a far older operating system from Cisco that runs on most of their routers and switches – IOS. They are intended as ‘aide memoires’ for myself – a crusty old Unix geek who wanted to find out about this IOS stuff when he finally got sick and tired of consumer grade routers.
The router I’m using for all of this is a Cisco 881W running IOS version 15. This is a ridiculously overpowered router for a domestic broadband connection, but it does have lots of interesting stuff to play with.
Now to the disclaimer part – I’m no CCIE; I’m a Unix geek and whilst I have considerable experience with networking, it has all been with networking services such as DNS and DHCP. So anything you find here could well be done better in a different way. Or perhaps I’ve encountered a feature that shouldn’t be used just yet, or perhaps I’ve found something in my ignorance that could actually be useful!