Walter Roberson
Guest
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 Posted:
Thu Dec 16, 2004 3:33 am Post subject:
Re: cat 3550 IOS |
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In article <cpq9dj$53f$01$1@news.t-online.com>,
rudolph rednose <bla@blubblubblub.de> wrote:
:there is a new IOS c3550-i5q3l2-tar.122-25.SE.tar
:could somebody pls explain me the difference to
:c3550-i5q3l2-tar.121-22.EA1.tar
:this 12.1 to 12.2 step and this SE. what does it mean?
Cisco goes through software development cycles. Their major
version number has been 12 for quite a few years, and I expect
that part to stay the same for some years more.
Within major version 12, each cycle gets a minor release
number, such as 12.1 or 12.2. Each cycle offers a release with
production-quality code with features that are very much the same
over a broad range of devices; such code -usually- has no letters
associated with it, but it could. During each cycle, there is
also a parallel series in which experimental new features applicable
to a broad range of devices are tried out; that code series has
the letter T after it, as in 12.2T. At the end of the cycle, the
successful new features from the previous T stream are moved into
the production stream, so something introduced in 12.1T would become
a part of 12.2 (no T).
There are also quite a few series of releases for devices which
do not fit into the general-purpose router category, such as the
3550 switches. Those releases usually have a series of letters
beginning with an E.
Within any one subrelease, Cisco may make small enhancements
or bug fixes that are not as extensive as is implied by the T
series. These minor change or fix releases are counted as
a number inside of parenthesis, such as 12.1(22)EA1 . That was
the 22'nd minor release of the production-quality 12.1 code
base and the EA1 tells us it is applicable to a family of LAN
switches.
Then there are a lot of very experimental releases for very
specific devices: those are pretty much "Use at your own risk!"
releases, and they generally have a series of letters begining
with an X, Y, or Z. Any one X, Y, or Z series usually does not
last more than 1 or 2 subreleases.
There are a lot of other letter suffixes uses for other purposes --
everything from A to Z is used for -something-.
The SE series implied by the c3550-i5q3l2-tar.122-25.SE
image stands for "Enterprise Services" if I recall correctly.
The transition from the EA series to the SE series implies that
they moved to a more general code base applicable to more devices,
and the SE series in particular implies that features are present
that are most useful for larger networks.
Now, there's an issue that you should know about, and that is
that the SE series codebase does not include all of the EA series
codebase. If you move from 12.1(22)EA1 to 12.2(25)SE then
although you will gain some features, you will also lose some
features. If you have a CCO account, then there is a way you
can look at the differences in more detail: go to the
page http://www.cisco.com/go/fn and use the tools there to
see what's what. Unfortunately, the 12.2(25)SE image is not
indexed as yet.
Note that there is a serious defect in the 12.1(22)EA1 image,
and you should be moving to 12.1(22)EA2 instead.
--
Studies show that the average reader ignores 106% of all statistics
they see in .signatures. |
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