This section discusses the objectives, audience, organization, and conventions of the Router Products Configuration Guide.
This publication describes the tasks necessary to configure and maintain your router. It includes task overviews, expanded descriptions of tasks, and comprehensive configuration examples. It does not provide complete command syntax descriptions, and therefore must be used in conjunction with the Router Products Command Reference publication.
This publication is intended primarily for network administrators who will be configuring and maintaining routers but are not necessarily familiar with the tasks involved, the relationship between them, or the commands necessary to perform particular tasks.
This publication is divided into five main parts. Each part comprises chapters describing related tasks or functions. The organization of parts and chapters in this publication matches the organization of parts and chapters in the Router Products Command Reference, except that this document does not contain appendixes. The parts in this publication are as follows:
- Part 1, "Product Introduction," contains an overview of the router and task descriptions for the system user interface and command parser. Begin your system configuration process with this part of the manual.
- Part 2, "System and Interface Configuration and Management," describes the tasks pertaining to system interfaces, system booting, terminal session and asynchronous lines, and also describes the command interpreter, or EXEC.
- Part 3, "Wide-Area Networking," describes the tasks pertaining to ATM, DDR, Frame Relay, SMDS, and X.25. The chapters are arranged in alphabetical order for ease of use.
- Part 4, "Routing Protocols," contains chapters that describe how to configure each supported network protocol. These protocols include Apollo Domain, AppleTalk, Banyan VINES, DECnet, IP, ISO CLNS, Novell IPX, and XNS (including Ungermann-Bass and 3Com variations). The chapters are arranged in alphabetical order for ease of use. This part also contains a chapter that discusses IP routing protocols, which include IGRP, BGP, RIP, OSPF, IS-IS, and ISO-IGRP.
- Part 5, "Bridging," contains chapters that describe how to configure transparent bridging, source-route bridging, source-route transparent (SRT) bridging, and source-route translational bridging (SR/TLB) on our routers.
- Part 6, "IBM Networking," contains chapters that describe how to configure the SDLC transport and serial tunneling mechanisms in an IBM local-area network. Also included are the tasks for configuring the local acknowledgment feature, managing your source-route bridges with LAN Network Manager, and configuring SDLLC, our solution to translating between IBM's SDLC data link protocol for serial lines and ISO's LLC2 data link protocol for Token Ring networks.
Software and hardware documentation uses the following conventions:
- The symbol ^ represents the key labeled Control.
- For example, the key combinations ^D and Ctrl-D mean hold down the Control key while you press the D key. Keys are indicated in capitals, but are not case sensitive.
- A string is defined as a nonquoted set of characters.
- For example, when setting up a community string for SNMP to "public," do not use quotes around the string, or the string will include the quotation marks.
Command descriptions use these conventions:
- Commands and keywords are in boldface font.
- Arguments for which you supply values are in italic font.
- Optional elements are shown in square brackets ([ ]); alternative optional elements are separated by vertical bars ( | ).
- Alternative but required elements are grouped in braces ({ }) and separated by vertical bars ( | ).
Examples use these conventions:
- Examples that contain system prompts denote interactive sessions, indicating that the user enters commands at the prompt. The system prompt indicates the current command mode. For example, the prompt
router(config)# indicates global configuration mode.
- Terminal sessions and information the system displays are in
screen font.
- Information you enter is in
boldface screen font.
- Nonprinting characters, such as passwords, are in angle brackets (< >).
- Default responses to system prompts are in square brackets ([ ]).
- Exclamation points (!) at the beginning of a line indicate a comment line. They are also displayed by the router for certain processes.
Note Means
reader take note. Notes contain helpful suggestions or references to materials not contained in this manual.
 | Caution Means reader be careful. In this situation, you might do something that could result in equipment damage or loss of data. |
