Technical Support

When you have a problem that you cannot resolve, contact customer service. To help resolve these problems, gather relevant information about your network prior to calling.

Gathering Information about Your Internetwork

Before gathering any specific data, compile a list of all symptoms users have reported on the internetwork (such as connections dropping or slow host response).

The next step is to gather specific information. Typical information needed to troubleshoot internetworking problems fall into two general categories: information required for any situation and information specific to the topology, technology, protocol, or problem.

Information that is always required by technical support engineers includes the following:

Configuration listing of all switch routers involved
Complete specifications of all switch routers involved
Version numbers of software (obtained with show version command) and Flash code (obtained with the show controllers command) on all relevant switch routers
Network topology map
List of hosts and servers (host and server type, number on network, description of host operating systems that are implemented)
List of network layer protocols, versions, and vendors

To assist you in gathering this required data, the show tech-support EXEC command has been added in Cisco IOS Release 11.1(4) and later. This command provides general information about the switch router that you can provide to your technical support representative when you are reporting a problem.

The show tech-support command outputs the equivalent of the show version, show running-config, show controllers, show stacks, show interfaces, show buffers, show process memory, and show process EXEC commands.

Specific information requirements that might be needed by technical support vary, depending on the situation, and include the following:

Output from the following general show commands:

: show interfaces
: show controllers {serial | token | mci | cbus | fddi | cxbus | cybus}
: show processes {cpu | mem}
: show buffer
: show mem summary

Output from the following protocol-specific show commands:

: show protocol route
: show protocol traffic
: show protocol interface
: show protocol arp

Output from relevant debug privileged EXEC commands
Output from protocol-specific ping and trace diagnostic tests, as appropriate
Network analyzer traces, as appropriate
Core dumps obtained using the exception dump switch configuration command, or using the write core switch configuration command if the system is operational, as appropriate

Getting the Data from Your Switch Router

When obtaining information from your switch router, tailor your method to the system that you are using to retrieve the information. Following are some hints for different platforms: