Hardware Overview

The network-module circuit board has 2 Network Interfaces.

Internal Interface (eth0)

The first Network Interface is internal between the ISR and the network-module. This connection is used to exchange traffic between the network interface and the ISR. For example, the console connection to the network-module is connected through this interface.

Designation

1. On the ISR side (Cisco IOS), this interface is described as: Service Interface Engine x/0 (where x is the network-module slot the blade was inserted in).
2. On the network-module side (Linux), the same interface is designated as eth0.

External Interface (eth1)

The other one, which is available on most of the network-module is external. It varies between a Fast Ethernet (100Mb/s) or Gigabit (1000Mb/s) and is available through an RJ-45 connector.

Designation

1. On the network-module side (Linux), this interface is designated as eth1.Note: This interface is not visible from the ISR and can only be configured and use on/by the network-module.

Configuring Network-Module internal interface

The first step in configuring the network-module interface is to enter the configuration on the ISR side. The complete configuration consist of:1. Configure the Integrated-Service-Engine interface
2. Configure the route proper route so that packets are relayed from the router to the network-module.

Integrated Service Engine Interface Configuration

To configure the internal interface on the ISR, you first need to get enable access to it.

1. Enter the configuration mode:

Router# config terminal

Router(config)#

2. Enter the interface mode

Router(config)#interface integrated-Service-Engine 1/0

Router(config-if)#

3. Now it is time to enter the IP configuration parameters for the network-module internal interface. Since the primary interface of the network-module does not have a physical connector, it is accessed through an ISR physical interface. One way to configure this is to set the internal interface as an unnumbered interface.

Here is a simple of such a configuration:

interface Integrated-Service-Engine1/0

ip unnumbered FastEthernet0/0

service-module ip address 192.168.1.3 255.255.255.0 

service-module ip default-gateway 192.168.1.2

In the previosus configuration example, the ip unnumbered FastEthernet0/0 is used so that we can avoid using an additional IP Address for the Integrated-Service-Engine1/0 interface on the IOS side.

Network-Module Routing Configuration (IOS)

Once the Network-Module interface on the IOS side is configured, the configuration of a route is necessary. A specific route to redirect traffic from the router to the Network-Module internal interface is required.This is achieved by creating a route to a single host (or ip address) specifying the ip address previously assigned through configuration of the Network-Module and using the 255.255.255.255 network mask to redirect to the Network-Module's interface.

First get to the IOS configuration mode:

Router# configure terminal

Router(config)# ip route 192.168.1.3 255.255.255.255 Integrated-Service-Engine1/0