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These release notes contain important information and caveats for the Cisco Content Transformation Engine 1400 Series (CTE) and Design Studio Release 2.5. This document supplements information in the Cisco Content Transformation Engine 1400 Series Configuration Note, the Design Studio User Guide, the IP Phone Solutions Guide, and the Design Studio Getting Started Guide.
These release notes contain the following topics:
Improper configuration of the CTE 1400 Series can result in a security risk. Before you deploy the CTE 1400 Series, verify that the CTE 1400 Series does not have access to protected intranet sites.
By default, the CTE 1400 Series proxies only the web pages that it has identified (transcoded in Design Studio) to prevent access to protected servers that are on the same subnet as the CTE 1400 Series. If you choose to override that default, do not put the CTE 1400 Series on the same subnet as protected servers.
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Note If you configure the CTE 1400 Series to proxy all web pages, the CTE 1400 Series provides access to computers on the same subnet as the web servers that are configured to work with the CTE 1400 Series. For example, suppose a CTE 1400 Series has an external IP address of 24.221.1.1 and an internal IP address of 192.168.1.31. On the same subnet, you have an intranet server, protected from outside access, with an IP address of 192.168.1.20. You can access all ports on the protected intranet server through the CTE 1400 Series by using the URL http://24.221.1.1/http://192.168.1.20. |
Also, be aware of the following security considerations:
Because the Cisco IP Phone does not support SSL, the connection between a Cisco IP Phone and the CTE is not secure. We recommend that you locate the connection between a Cisco IP Phone and the CTE behind a firewall.
When Design Studio is redirected to an SSL site from a non-SSL site (from HTTPS to HTTP), the connection between Design Studio and the CTE is not secure. We recommend that you locate the connection between Design Studio and the CTE behind a firewall.
The Design Studio application requires the following:
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Note JRE is on the CTE Design Studio CD-ROM and is also available from http://www.javasoft.com. JRE requires an additional 16 MB of disk space. Design Studio does not work with other versions of JRE or the Java Development Kit (JDK). |
The network connection can be through a proxy server that you specify when logging in to Design Studio.
Website content is supported in the following formats:
The CTE and Design Studio support web pages that use any standard encoding; they transcode web pages to the formats required by all supported wireless devices: UTF-8, 7-bit ASCII, and Shift-JIS encoding.
Wireless device microbrowsers do not support all content types. The Cisco CTE 1400 Series passes the following content to a wireless device in its original format:
Table 1 lists the destination devices supported by the Cisco CTE 1400 Series.
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1 cHTML = Compact HTML 2 WML = Wireless Markup Language |
This section describes how to upgrade your CTE and Design Studio to Release 2.5.
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Note Before you upgrade a CTE, record its network and DNS parameters. You will need to reconfigure the CTE after you upgrade it. |
To upgrade from Release 1.1.6, perform these steps:
If you do not have the 2.2a Restore CD, there are two ways to obtain the CD:
For instructions on downloading these files, see the "Download from CCO" section.
Step 2 Once you have upgraded to 2.2a, obtain a Release 2.5 Restore CD from Cisco TAC by calling 1-800-553-2447 in the United States. To obtain a directory of toll-free Cisco TAC telephone numbers for all countries, go to the following URL:
http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/687/Directory/DirTAC.shtml
Step 3 Once you have the Release 2.5 CD, follow the instructions in the "Upgrade from CD" section.
To upgrade from Release 2.2, follow the instructions in the "Upgrade from CD" section.
This section describes the following CTE upgrade procedures:
There are three types of patch files you can download:
To download a partial or full upgrade file, perform these steps:
Step 2 Download the appropriate patch file.
For a partial upgrade that does not overwrite your configuration files, download the following patch file:
CTEServerPartialUpgrade-k9.2-2a.tgz
For a full upgrade that overwrites any existing configuration information, download the following patch file:
CTEServerFullUpgrade-k9.2-2a.tgz
Step 3 Log on to the CTE Administration screens from any web browser, entering the following URL:
Step 4 For a full upgrade, use your regular administrative username and password to log on to the Administration screens. For a partial upgrade, use root as the username and cteadmin as the default password.
Step 5 From the Upload Server Upgrade field on Administration > Uploads screen, browse for the file to upload, and select it.
Step 6 Click the Submit button.
Step 7 Once the upload is complete, the CTE will automatically restart.
Step 8 If you downloaded the full patch file (CTEServerFullUpgrade-k9.2-2a.tgz), you will need to reconfigure the CTE from the CTE console. For more information on reconfiguring the CTE, see the description of the CTE Console menus in the CTE 1400 Configuration Note.
To download an ISO image file, perform these steps:
Step 2 Download the ISO Images file (CTEServerISO-k9.2-2a.zip).
Step 3 Burn a CD containing the ISO Images file information.
Step 4 Go to the "Upgrade from CD" section, and use the CD you have created in this procedure to upgrade your CTE.
To upgrade from Release 2.2a to Release 2.5, perform these steps:
Step 2 Insert the CTE Release 2.5 Restore CD-ROM into the CD-ROM drive of the CTE.
Step 3 Power down the CTE.
Step 4 Wait approximately 10 seconds.
Step 5 Power up the CTE.
Step 6 The serial console displays the following messages during the upgrade:
Step 7 When the upgrade is complete, eject the Restore CD and reboot the CTE.
Step 8 When the CTE restarts, the CTE console interface appears.
To upgrade Design Studio, install the Design Studio software from the CD. For more information on installing Design Studio, see the Cisco CTE 1400 Series and Design Studio Quick Start Guide.
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Note Design Studio automatically upgrades configuration files created in previous releases to the release 2.5 format. When you attempt to open a configuration file, Design Studio gives you the choice of overwriting the old file or saving it to a different name. |
To uninstall an earlier version of Design Studio, perform these steps:
Step 2 Carefully select the version of Design Studio you wish to remove from the displayed list, and click Remove.
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Note On Windows 2000, the uninstall will occur right after you click the Remove button. On other operating systems, a sequence of dialog boxes will guide you through the uninstall process. |
The CTE and Design Studio do not support the following items:
These sections describe new features in the Cisco CTE 1400 Series and Design Studio release 2.5:
These sections describe the new features for the CTE 1400 Series release 2.5:
For more information, see the CTE 1400 Series Configuration Note.
The CTE Console menu has been restructured to contain five options plus submenus for setting up the CTE, such as defining networking and DNS parameters, pinging other machines in the network, defining administrative users, and restarting and shutting down the CTE.
The CTE 1400 Series Administration screens let you monitor and maintain the activity on your CTE from any browser on the Internet. Through this interface, you can set or display the following:
Other new CTE features include the following:
These sections describe the new features in Design Studio release 2.5:
For more information, see the Design Studio User Guide.
. If you want to apply a rule to multiple depths or positions, that icon suggests which elements you should consider iterating.The following new features in Design Studio significantly improve the support for IP phones. For more information, refer to the new IP Phone Solutions Guide and the Design Studio User Guide.
This section describes documentation updates in Cisco CTE 1400 Series and Design Studio release 2.5.
Although on pages 5 and 30 the printed version of the CTE Configuration Note mentions FlexLM licensing as a supported feature, FlexLM licensing is not supported in Release 2.5.
The CTE can be configured to operate in a load-balanced environment. When a CTE is set up with a server load balancer (SLB), requests are generated to the IP address of the SLB, which sends the request to an appropriate web server.
The SLB must be configurable to provide real-time header parsing. To configure the SLB, perform these steps:
Step 2 For optimal performance, use the SLB configuration tools to do the following:
a. Configure additional virtual IP addresses. These IP address can be used by the CTE when reestablishing connection to the SLB.
b. Configure the SLB so it does not parse the HTTP headers received on the virtual IP addresses, which saves performance time.
The following sequence of events occurs when a client requests content, and the SLB encounters a CTE-supported user agent string:
1. The client requests a web page from a domain.
2. The SLB forwards the request to the CTE.
3. The CTE reissues the request to the default host masquerading as the user agent.
4. The SLB receives the request and directs it to the appropriate web server.
5. The web server retrieves the content and passes it through the SLB to the CTE.
6. The CTE transforms the content and sends it back through the SLB and on to the client device.
You can specify a default URL for each interface of the CTE. Then when a request comes in on Interface 0, the CTE will automatically use the default URL 0. This action is useful for installation in a demilitarized zone (DMZ), where one interface is internal and one is external.
You can determine which version of the CTE software you are using in either of the following ways:
Be aware of the following script and noscript issues:
Be aware of the following DDF Editor issues:
For example, the expression ^.*(Mozilla/2.0 \(compatible; Elaine/3.0\).*$ is correct.
The expression ^.*(Mozilla/2.0 (compatible; Elaine/3.0)).*$ is incorrect.
The Dial Number rule does not work on an IP Phone when applied to an element if the label is the same as the element. For example, if you attempt to apply the rule to a phone number 888-123-1234, and the label is also 888-123-1234, the rule will not work, and the phone number will not display in the "Phone Number on this page" list on the IP phone.
This section contains the following topics:
There are no open caveats for the CTE in this release.
This section describes the known limitations in Design Studio release 2.5.
When using the Paginate rule to paginate an anchor that contains a slash <href> statement (<href>='/'), the Paginate rule does not appear to work while you are in Design Studio. It does, however, produce the correct results on display devices.
Workaround: The Paginate rule used as described works fine when content is displayed on devices.
A CTE file is not saved to disk if you save it with a blank text field. This situation can happen when you add a URL to a project, click the Open Configuration button, and type Yes when asked to save the file. When you say Yes, a File Save dialog box appears with a blank file name text field. If you click the Save button with no file name specified, the file is not saved and your work is lost.
Workaround: Be sure to enter a name in the file name text field of the File Save Dialog box.
This problem is a condition of Java 1.2.2 and will no longer be an issue in subsequent releases of Design Studio, which will use Java 1.3.
When you enter either File > Open or File > Save As and the appropriate dialog box appears, the list/detail icons in the upper-right corner of the dialog box do not work.
Workaround: This problem is a condition of Java 1.2.2 and will no longer be an issue in subsequent releases of Design Studio, which will use Java 1.3.
If the alt tag contains a comma, the IP Phone will not load an image page.
Workaround: Use a Modify rule to remove the comma, or ignore the alt tags altogether to navigate the entire page.
This section describes the caveats resolved in Cisco CTE 1400 Series release 2.5.
On pages using the base tag to set an absolute URL for interpreting relative links, JavaScript-related browsing will fail with 404 errors. When JavaScript creates relative URLs (URLs that require the URL of the current resource to be interpreted correctly), they are interpreted relative to the URL of the page, rather than to the URL of the base tag.
Resolution: Relative URLs are now interpreted to automatically select the base tag.
In the CTE console, if you set HTTP parameters before setting networking parameters, your settings will not take effect until you restart the CTE.
Resolution: The order for setting parameters is not an issue in this release.
There are no resolved caveats in Design Studio for this release.
This section contains the following topics:
This section describes the known limitations in Cisco CTE 1400 Series release 2.2.
On pages using the base tag to set an absolute URL for interpreting relative links, JavaScript-related browsing will fail with 404 errors. When JavaScript creates relative URLs (URLs that require the URL of the current resource to be interpreted correctly), they are interpreted relative to the URL of the page, rather than to the URL of the base tag.
This section describes the known limitations in Design Studio release 2.2.
In Design Studio, you can only upload DDF files the first time you enter the DDF editor. Subsequent DDF file upload attempts will not work. Before each subsequent DDF file upload, select the command File > Connect to CTE 1400 in Design Studio.
Workaround: Reconnect to the CTE each time you reenter the DDF editor.
This section describes the caveats resolved in Cisco CTE 1400 Series release 2.2.
In the CTE console, if you set HTTP parameters before setting networking parameters, your settings will not take effect until you restart the CTE.
Resolution: The order for setting these CTE parameters is no longer relevant, and you can set them in any order.
This section describes the caveats resolved in Design Studio release 2.2.
If Design Studio is open but inactive over an extended period of time, you may not be able to continue without restarting your Design Studio session.
Resolution: Leaving Design Studio open and inactive for long time periods no longer requires you to restart your Design Studio session.
This section contains the following topics:
This section describes the known limitations in Cisco CTE 1400 Series release 2.1.
In the CTE console, if you set HTTP parameters before setting networking parameters, your settings will not take effect until you restart the CTE.
Workaround: Set networking parameters before you set HTTP parameters.
There are no open caveats in Design Studio for this release.
This section describes the caveats resolved in Cisco CTE 1400 Series release 2.1.
The CTE does not retain a backup version of a configuration file. When you publish a configuration file, it overwrites the previous configuration file.
Resolution: Design Studio keeps a backup version of a configuration file. When you publish a configuration file, you have the option of merging or overwriting the previous file.
If Design Studio is open but inactive over an extended period of time, you may not be able to continue without restarting your Design Studio session.
Resolution: Be sure that the resource levels on your system do not become depleted.
Websites that are coded in WML do not pass through the CTE if the URL to the site is relative. If the URL to the WML-coded site is absolute, the site content passes through the CTE.
Resolution: The CTE supports relative URLs to WML-coded sites.
When CTE console option 9 (Set Secure Proxy) is disabled, SSL/HTTPS sessions are converted to HTTP and are, thus, unsecure.
Resolution: To access secure sites from the CTE, you must either enable secure redirects or set up the device-to-CTE connection through a secure port and HTTPS. This procedure is not required for IP phones.
Input fields that are created with the textarea element do not work on WAP devices.
Resolution: The CTE automatically transforms textarea elements to input elements.
The CTE supports HTTP Basic Authentication only.
Resolution: The CTE supports Windows NT Challenge/Response Authentication (also referred to as NTLM).
The CTE currently supports only strong (128-bit) Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption for incoming connections.
Resolution: The CTE supports all SSL encryption.
Although you can specify Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) as the boot protocol (option 2 in the CTE console), the CTE works only with DHCP servers that are configured to return a host name.
Resolution: The CTE does not support DHCP.
The masquerade IP address defaults to an invalid value.
Resolution: The default value is now correct.
The CTE processes web pages only from servers that return a valid content type, either "text/html" or "text/xml." The CTE does not transform a web page with any other content type and passes it to wireless devices as is.
Resolution: Set up your server to return a supported content type.
This section describes the resolved caveats in Design Studio release 2.1.
Two consecutive upgrades to the CTE cause Design Studio to hang.
Resolution: Design Studio no longer hangs after consecutive upgrades.
You cannot select content that is generated by a style sheet in the browser view.
Resolution: You can now select the generated content in either view.
After the following sequence of steps, Design Studio is unable to load additional web pages:
c. Browse to www.yoursite.com.
e. Remove the page from the project.
f. Browse to www.yoursite.comn. (Notice the spelling at the end of the URL.)
Resolution: Design Studio now handles the page loading correctly.
Design Studio cannot save a configuration file that contains an XML page with a CDATA section.
Resolution: Design Studio supports XML pages with a CDATA section.
Design Studio does not correctly store the name of Paginate Identifier rules in a configuration file. When you open a configuration file, Paginate Identifier rules might not have a name.
Resolution: Design Studio correctly stores the name of Paginate Identifier rules.
The scroll bars in the XHTML source view are incorrect. This problem occurs as the result of a known issue with JRE/JDK version 1.2.2 that will be resolved in a future release.
Resolution: The scroll bars display correctly.
You cannot rename a page or project in Design Studio.
Resolution: You can now right-click a page or project name in the Design Studio window to change it.
After applying a rule or clicking a tab, the Edit or View Original tab is blank.
Resolution: The Edit and View Original tabs display correctly.
When you click a link in either the Edit tab or View Original tab, Design Studio sometimes displays the link destination instead of selecting the link.
Resolution: Design Studio selects links that are clicked in the Edit or View Original tabs.
You cannot save a configuration file (.cte) with an extension that contains a "/" or "\".
Resolution: Design Studio displays a warning dialog box if you attempt to save a configuration file to a name with invalid characters.
After browsing to a page in Design Studio, the URL listed in the Address field is incorrect. This problem occurs if the server where the web page originates is returning a content type other than "text/html" or "text/xml."
Resolution: Set up your server to return a supported content type.
There are no new caveats for this release.
This section contains the following topics:
This section describes the known limitations in Cisco CTE 1400 Series release 1.1.6.
The default browser on a Palm device cannot handle more than two consecutive redirect requests. When that occurs, the Palm device displays the message "You've been redirected too many times."
Workaround: Use the Blazer browser instead of the Elaine browser for Palm devices.
Design Studio allows you to publish a configuration file that does not contain any identifier rules. Without an identifier rule, a configuration file matches all pages. As a result, a wireless device user can retrieve any page through the CTE, even if console option 12 (Enable Unrestricted Proxy Support) is disabled.
Workaround: Include at least one identifier rule per page in a configuration file.
This section describes the known limitations in Design Studio release 1.1.6.
Design Studio supports only the XSL and XHTML namespaces. If you import an XSL style sheet that contains references to other namespaces, the console displays a message such as the following: "Unsupported stylesheet operation: no such prefix: rdf."
Workaround: Remove references to unsupported namespaces in XSL style sheets.
Design Studio does not support XSL style sheets that have an xsl:import element followed by an xsl:include element. If you attempt to add a page to an XML project that uses such a style sheet, the CTE console displays the error MalFormedURLException and you will need to stop and restart Design Studio.
Workaround: Combine the XSL style sheet referenced by the xsl:include element with the style sheet referenced by the xsl:import element. Design Studio supports the xsl:import element.
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Note The *** in this section indicate that the caveat was reported and resolved after release 1.1.5. |
This section describes the caveats resolved in Cisco CTE 1400 Series release 1.1.6.
The CTE assumed that the network mask set for the second network interface card (eth1) is the same for the first network interface card (eth0).
Resolution: You can set the network mask for eth1 by using the CTE console option 3 (Set Networking Parameters) as described in the Cisco Content Transformation Engine 1400 Series Configuration Note.
WML devices that use the pre-3.1 version of the Openwave Mobile Browser (UP.Browser) sometimes displayed a Form Compilation Error when attempting to handle forms.
Resolution: The CTE correctly handles the forms on the earlier versions of the UP.Browser.
When browsing on a Palm VII, clicking a Submit button sometimes resulted in the display of the same page.
Resolution: The correct page is now loaded.
Decimal character references below 160 will be encoded differently in release 1.1.6. The encoding change will affect any rules that include these special characters.
Resolution: The encoding for decimal character references has changed. Design Studio converts the encoding when you open a release 1.1.5 configuration file in release 1.1.6.
The CTE could not access a website from behind a proxy firewall. To your website, the CTE appeared as a browser, like Internet Explorer or Netscape. If you set up your website to use a proxy server, the CTE was unable to access pages from your website.
Resolution: The CTE now supports proxy servers.
If you configure a cache engine to cache pages from the CTE, you can log in to the CTE but cannot retrieve web pages from it. This problem has been observed only with the Cisco cache engine.
Resolution: Set your cache engine to bypass mode. Review the configuration note for your cache engine for instructions.
Unless option 4 (Set Masquerade Host) was set in the CTE console, you could not follow links on WAP-enabled phones that use WML.
Resolution: You no longer have to set a masquerade host to follow links on WAP-enabled phones that use WML.
The CTE sometimes did not correctly handle a form on WML and IP phones if the form had an input type of "hidden" and a value that contained the "%" character.
Resolution: The CTE correctly handles the forms.
Some servers return a content-type value of "text/plain" for XML documents. Because the CTE chose a parser based on the content-type value, the wrong parser was used for XML documents.
Resolution: The CTE now chooses a parser based on the filename extension, rather than the content-type value.
A CTE attempting to perform more than two transformations simultaneously will successfully handle only one of the transformations and will not respond to the other requests.
Resolution: The CTE correctly handles multiple simultaneous transformations.
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Note The *** in this section indicate that the caveat was reported and resolved after release 1.1.5. |
This section describes the resolved caveats in release 1.1.6 of Design Studio.
When uploading a configuration file to the CTE, Design Studio appeared to hang.
Resolution: Design Studio displays a progress bar, so you can monitor the progress of the upload.
When you saved a configuration file, Design Studio did not check for a file of the same name in that directory and display the Save As dialog box.
Resolution: Design Studio displays the Save As dialog box when you attempt to save a configuration file with a duplicate filename.
If you attempted to browse to a page while Design Studio was publishing a configuration file to the CTE, Design Studio displayed a message that there was a problem with the upload although it was completed successfully.
Resolution: Design Studio no longer displays an error message when the upload completes successfully.
A page sometimes rendered differently in the Edit tab and the Browse tab. This problem occurred when you created a rule with the Match Element Name field not selected and the Position to Match option set to a range. Design Studio incorrectly calculated the range in the Edit tab.
Resolution: Pages now render correctly in the Edit tab.
Design Studio sometimes worked incorrectly when you attempted to save a configuration file. In some cases, a Java NullPointerException occurred; in other cases, Design Studio incorrectly interpreted a filename as invalid.
Resolution: Design Studio now correctly saves configuration files.
Design Studio allowed the p element to be hierarchical. Any rule associated with a p element may not have resulted in a correct transformation.
Resolution: Design Studio no longer allows the p element to be hierarchical. Design Studio corrects the transformation rules for the p element when you open a 1.1.5 configuration file in release 1.1.6.
Design Studio did not correctly display some UTF-8 characters, such as the bullet character.
Resolution: Design Studio correctly displays the special characters.
The Dial rule could not prepend a "9" or other number to access an external number.
Resolution: The Configure: Dial Rule dialog box now includes a text box for entering a phone number prefix.
Clicking the Close button in the Save As dialog box did not close the dialog box and displayed a Conflict message box.
Resolution: The Close button in the Save As dialog box works correctly.
The Find dialog box did not work correctly when the search string included a space or the following special characters: /, <, >, =.
Resolution: The Find dialog box handles spaces and special characters.
Design Studio might not display the content of a noframes element in the browser view.
Resolution: Design Studio always displays the content of a noframes element.
Design Studio incorrectly calculated the range values in the Configure Element dialog boxes.
Resolution: Design Studio correctly calculates the range values.
This section contains the following topics:
This section describes the known limitations in Cisco CTE 1400 Series release 1.1.5.
The CTE does not support web pages that exceed 256 KB.
Workaround: None. In a future release, the CTE console will allow you to configure the supported page size.
You must choose the encoding type that is used for web pages from the CTE console. The encoding type you choose applies to all web pages.
Workaround: The CTE uses Latin-1 encoding by default, which will work for most pages that are not encoded in Unicode Transformation Format-8 (UTF-8). We recommend that you use Latin-1 encoding for HTML-based pages and UTF-8 encoding for XML documents. You can also choose raw, ASCII, or macro encoding.
This section describes the known limitations in Design Studio release 1.1.5.
The drop-down menus in the Log in to the Cisco CTE 1400 Series dialog box do not retain previously selected values. For example, if you change the value of the User Name field, the previously selected value no longer appears in the menu. This problem occurs as the result of a known issue with JRE/JDK version 1.2.2.
You cannot delete or edit multiple rules simultaneously by selecting them in the Transformation Rules or Identifier Rules lists and then clicking the Delete or Edit button. Design Studio performs the command only on the last rule selected.
Workaround: Delete or edit the rules individually.
The following documents are available for the Cisco CTE 1400 Series and Design Studio:
The following sections explain how to obtain documentation from Cisco Systems.
You can access the most current Cisco documentation on the World Wide Web at the following URL:
Translated documentation is available at the following URL:
http://www.cisco.com/public/countries_languages.shtml
Cisco documentation and additional literature are available in a Cisco Documentation CD-ROM package, which is shipped with your product. The Documentation CD-ROM is updated monthly and may be more current than printed documentation. The CD-ROM package is available as a single unit or through an annual subscription.
Cisco documentation is available in the following ways:
http://www.cisco.com/cgi-bin/order/order_root.pl
http://www.cisco.com/go/subscription
If you are reading Cisco product documentation on Cisco.com, you can submit technical comments electronically. Click the Fax or Email option under the "Leave Feedback" section at the bottom of the Cisco Documentation home page. After you complete the form, print it out and fax it to Cisco at 408 527-0730.
You can e-mail your comments to bug-doc@cisco.com.
To submit your comments by mail, use the response card behind the front cover of your document, or write to the following address:
Cisco Systems
Attn: Document Resource Connection
170 West Tasman Drive
San Jose, CA 95134-9883
Cisco provides Cisco.com as a starting point for all technical assistance. Customers and partners can obtain documentation, troubleshooting tips, and sample configurations from online tools by using the Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC) Website. Cisco.com registered users have complete access to the technical support resources on the Cisco TAC Website.
Cisco.com is the foundation of a suite of interactive, networked services that provides immediate, open access to Cisco information, networking solutions, services, programs, and resources at any time, from anywhere in the world.
Cisco.com is a highly integrated Internet application and a powerful, easy-to-use tool that provides a broad range of features and services to help you to:
You can self-register on Cisco.com to obtain customized information and service. To access Cisco.com, go to the following URL:
The Cisco TAC is available to all customers who need technical assistance with a Cisco product, technology, or solution. Two types of support are available through the Cisco TAC: the Cisco TAC Web Site and the Cisco TAC Escalation Center.
Inquiries to Cisco TAC are categorized according to the urgency of the issue:
Which Cisco TAC resource you choose is based on the priority of the problem and the conditions of service contracts, when applicable.
The Cisco TAC Website allows you to resolve P3 and P4 issues yourself, saving both cost and time. The site provides around-the-clock access to online tools, knowledge bases, and software. To access the Cisco TAC Website, go to the following URL:
All customers, partners, and resellers who have a valid Cisco services contract have complete access to the technical support resources on the Cisco TAC Website. The Cisco TAC Website requires a Cisco.com login ID and password. If you have a valid service contract but do not have a login ID or password, go to the following URL to register:
http://www.cisco.com/register/
If you cannot resolve your technical issues by using the Cisco TAC Website, and you are a Cisco.com registered user, you can open a case online by using the TAC Case Open tool at the following URL:
http://www.cisco.com/tac/caseopen
If you have Internet access, it is recommended that you open P3 and P4 cases through the Cisco TAC Website.
The Cisco TAC Escalation Center addresses issues that are classified as priority level 1 or priority level 2; these classifications are assigned when severe network degradation significantly impacts business operations. When you contact the TAC Escalation Center with a P1 or P2 problem, a Cisco TAC engineer will automatically open a case.
To obtain a directory of toll-free Cisco TAC telephone numbers for your country, go to the following URL:
http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/687/Directory/DirTAC.shtml
Before calling, please check with your network operations center to determine the level of Cisco support services to which your company is entitled; for example, SMARTnet, SMARTnet Onsite, or Network Supported Accounts (NSA). In addition, please have available your service agreement number and your product serial number.
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Posted: Mon Aug 18 14:43:30 PDT 2003
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