System information

APPENDIX
Technical Support Information C-521
C
Technical Support Information
When you have a problem that you cannot resolve, the resource of last resort is your Cisco Systems
technical support representative. To analyze a problem, your technical support representative will
need certain information about the situation and the symptoms you are experiencing. To speed the
problem isolation and resolution process, present this data when you contact your representative.
This appendix describes how to collect relevant information about your internetwork and how to
present that information to your technical support representative. In addition, some sections describe
Cisco Connection Online, Cisco’s primary, real-time support channel on the World Wide Web
(WWW), and Cisco Connection Documentation, Cisco’s library of product information on
CD-ROM.
Gathering Information About Your Internetwork
Before gathering any specific data, compile a list of all symptoms that 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 falls 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 routers involved
• Complete specifications of all routers involved
• Version numbers of software (obtained with the show versioncommand) and firmware (obtained
with the show controllers command) on all relevant routers
• Network topology map
• List of hosts and servers (host and server type, number on network, description of host operating
systems 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 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 cpu exec commands.
Specific requirements that vary depending on the situation include the following: