2610 IOS upgrade to 12.4

Sa'ad

Hey fellows, does anyone know if a 2610 IOS could be upgraded to 12.4? I think I read on a previous post some where on this forum that it was not possible. Is is true? Thanks

NetworkGod

I think 2610 you can only upgrade up to 12.3 and that's with proper flash size.

Sa'ad

Thats what I thought too, just wanted to confirm. Thank you.

mikej412

There is always this option from the InternetworkExpert website
Booting XM Images on Non-XM 2600 Series Routers

Not pretty, but it works. Definitely take their advise at the end about saving configurations often.

Sa'ad

Thanks Mike, never knew that was possible there. Thanks for the link.

MrD

Very cool Mike! I will be automating the boot process for my 2600s to boot to my tftp server instead of getting rid of them. That makes me wonder if the minimum ram guidlines for various images are just guidelines. For instance. Cisco recommends 12.4(10a) Advanced Enterprise Services running on a 2610xm to have 128 ram/32 flash. I wonder if you could really run it on 96 or 64 ram instead of 128.

Thanks!

mikej412

The TFTP boot gets you by the problem of not enough flash to store the image.

You usually can get by with less memory in a lab environment, and with wedging an XM image into an old 26xx -- you have no choice. Just remember its not a production solution, or even a temporary production workaround.

You do get the memory warning.... and the occasional "I told you so" when the router crashes under the load.

In the lab environment, you won't know until you try it if they hard coded a memory check to load the image.... and you won't know until it crashes if you "pushed it to hard."

Somewhere in the Dynamips/Dynagen docs it did talk about getting away with running in less memory....

mgeorge

Ahhh another IOS question ^_^ Im good at these lol...
Yes you can do what mike said and wield the XM IOS to the earlier 2600 series routers but it will crash almost every time at 70% work load due to lack of memory.

On the other hand, you can use TFTP boot via TFTP Server but then agian this will still cause the same issue...

The only IOS that i know of that will run stable on a 16/64 or even a 32/64 2600 Series router is the Telco feature set, which i beleive is very hard to get from cisco, and it really does not provide the features needed for most networks, just features required for telco's lol... go figure? haha...

right now best thing to run on a 2600 series router is to use 32F/64D and use 12.3(21) enterprise basic.

enjoy ^_^