Here at CiscoNews, we are always interested to hear what people use to make their lives a little easier when administering Cisco kit.
Ill get the ball rolling with some of the tools we use and I would be interested to hear what you use too!
Terminal tools:
* Putty - Free, but awesome. Can be used for Serial, SSH and Telnet amongst others! Get it Here
You can also try adding Putty Connection Manager to make things a little more like SecureCRT. You can get PuttyCM Here
* Secure CRT - This is a commerical tool, but is definitely worth the money. Has more advanced features for managing large numbers of entries. You can split your customers down into folders for example. Also has a nice logging feature, very useful when those buffers are filling up quick.
TFTP Tools:
I use three different TFTP servers at the moment.
* Pumpkin TFTP - Another freebie! Awesome Get it Here
* TFTPD32 - Again, Free. Don’t you just love open source? Get it Here
It is worth mentioning that TFTPD32 is recommended by Cisco. I have had it recommend to me by TAC before too.
* Solar Winds TFTP server - Another free TFTP server? You got it. Again, much of a muchness with the TFTP servers. They all serve the same purpose and perform their function without issue. Get it Here
One other tool I use fairly often, but is not software, is a memory card reader. These are absolutely priceless imho.
For those that arent aware, Cisco change the file system on many devices to FAT some time ago. This means that a Memory card from an ASA or ISR router can be put into a card reader and accessed by a PC. This means you can upgrade an IOS in the blink of an eye rather than waiting for TFTP. It is also very useful for those times when you need to do a quick backup or upgrade and do not have direct network access.
There are obviously a whole bunch of other tools we use, ASDM, IDM, MARS etc.
Anyway, enough out of me. Please leave a reply with your weapons of choice! 
Entries (RSS)
May 6th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Great list! Putty and TFTPD32 are indispensable.
Another couple hardware tools that I use frequently are a USB-Serial dongle and a straight-through (or rollover) RJ-45 coupler. The serial port is long gone from most laptops and having a coupler often keeps me from having to sit on the floor behind a rack.
Wireshark , the network protocol analyzer, is another excellent software tool as well.
May 6th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Yeah, How could I forget Wireshark. It is absolutely critical for troubleshooting!
As for USB to Serial, we have tried a few and settled on the Keyspan ones as shown here: http://www.keyspan.com/products/usa19hs/
They seem to be well enough built and have better OS support than Most!
Now if someone would just create a Serial that has a built in bluetooth controller and encryption. Could have one in every device in the rack then
Another good one is Kiwi Syslog. Useful little windows based Syslog Daemon. Have also been looking at Zenoss Open Source recently too, which is a network monitoring and graphing app. It has a nice Google map dashboard that shows the geographical location of your sites! Pretty cool
Thanks for the reply
May 8th, 2008 at 9:02 am
Get a Mac!
Terminal.app - Just makes sense as it is all built in
nc - Need I say more
I am also using my EeePC now for all my datacentre work. Got BackTrack 3 on it and I use minicom and my USB dongle fine..
May 8th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
I use PuTTy (the newest versions now support Serial ports) and PuTTy Connection Manager http://puttycm.free.fr/ and TFTP32
May 30th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
PuTTY Connection Manager 0.7.0.4470 : http://puttycm.free.fr/support/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=111