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ACX Series Autoinstallation Overview

Supported Autoinstallation Interfaces and Protocols

Before autoinstallation on a router can take place, the router must acquire an IP address or a USB key. The protocol or protocols you choose for IP address acquisition determine the router interface to connect to the network for autoinstallation. The router detects the connected interface and requests an IP address with a protocol appropriate for the interface. Autoinstallation is supported over an Ethernet LAN interface. For IP address acquisition, the ACX Series router uses DHCP, BOOTP, or Reverse Address Resolution Protocol (RARP) on an Ethernet LAN interface.

If the server with the autoinstallation configuration file is not on the same LAN segment as the new router, or if a specific router is required by the network, you must configure an intermediate router directly attached to the new router, through which the new router can send HTTP, FTP, Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP), BOOTP, and Domain Name System (DNS) requests. In this case, you specify the IP address of the intermediate router as the location to receive HTTP, FTP, or TFTP requests for autoinstallation.

Typical Autoinstallation Process on a New Router

When a router is powered on for the first time, it performs the following autoinstallation tasks:

1. The new router sends out DHCP, BOOTP, or RARP requests on each connected interface simultaneously to obtain an IP address.

   If a DHCP server responds, it provides the router with some or all of the following information:

   • An IP address and subnet mask for the autoinstallation interface.
   • The location of the TFTP (typically), Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), or FTP server on which the configuration file is stored.
   • The name of the configuration file to be requested from the HTTP, FTP, or TFTP server.
   • The IP address or hostname of the HTTP, FTP, or TFTP server.

     If the DHCP server provides only the hostname, a DNS server must be available on the network to resolve the name to an IP address.

   • The IP address of an intermediate router if the configuration server is on a different LAN segment from the new router.
2. After the new router acquires an IP address, the autoinstallation process on the router attempts to download a configuration file in the following ways:
   1. If the configuration file is specified as a URL, the router fetches the configuration file from the URL by using HTTP, FTP, or TFTP depending on the protocol specified in the URL.
   2. If the DHCP server specifies the host-specific configuration file (boot file) hostname.conf, the router uses that filename in the TFTP server request. (In the filename, hostname is the hostname of the new router.) The autoinstallation process on the new router makes three unicast TFTP requests for hostname.conf. If these attempts fail, the router broadcasts three requests to any available TFTP server for the file.
   3. If the new router cannot locate hostname.conf, the autoinstallation process unicasts or broadcasts TFTP requests for a default router configuration file called network.conf, which contains hostname-to-IP address mapping information, to attempt to find its hostname.
   4. If network.conf contains no hostname entry for the new router, the autoinstallation process sends out a DNS request and attempts to resolve the new router’s IP address to a hostname.
   5. If the new router can determine its hostname, it sends a TFTP request for the hostname.conf file.
   6. If the new router is unable to map its IP address to a hostname, it sends TFTP requests for the default configuration file router.conf.
3. After the new router locates a configuration file on a TFTP server, autoinstallation downloads the file, installs the file on the router, and commits the configuration.