Nowadays, Cisco IOS XE has become very relevant in the _var2 area. Its importance has transcended borders and has captured the attention of experts in the field, as well as the general public. Cisco IOS XE has been the subject of numerous studies and investigations that seek to understand its impact on _var3, and its influence on _var4. In this article we will explore different aspects related to Cisco IOS XE, from its origin and evolution, to its implications in today's society. In addition, we will analyze its relevance in the _var5 context and its future projection.
| Cisco IOS XE | |
|---|---|
| Developer | Cisco Systems |
| OS family | Unix-like |
| Working state | Current |
| Source model | Closed source |
| Latest release | 17.18.1[1] |
| Supported platforms | Some Cisco routers (such as ASR 1000) and some Catalyst switches (such as 3850) |
| Default user interface | Command line interface |
| Preceded by | Cisco IOS |
| Official website | Cisco IOS XE |
IOS XE is a release train of Cisco Systems' widely deployed Internetworking Operating System (IOS), introduced with the ASR 1000 series.[2]
It is built on Linux[3][4] and provides a distributed software architecture that moves many operating system responsibilities out of the IOS process[5][6] and has a copy of IOS running as a separate process.[7] Since it runs a copy of IOS, all CLI commands are the same between Cisco IOS and IOS XE, in contrast to IOS XR, which has a completely different code base and whose developers implemented a different CLI command set.
IOS XE is released separately for ASR 1000[8] and Catalyst 3850.[9]
Cisco IOS is a monolithic operating system running directly on the hardware while IOS XE is a combination of a Linux kernel and a monolithic application (IOSd) that runs on top of this kernel. On the other hand, IOS XR is based on QNX (since version 5.0 it's also based on Linux), where the IOSd application has been separated into many different applications. While IOS XE (IOSd) and IOS share a lot of the same code, IOS XR is a completely different code base.
Since IOS XE has IOSd running as an application on top of Linux, it becomes possible to also run different applications on the hardware, a good example of this is running Wireshark on a switch.[10] Another example is the Cisco IOS XE Open Service Containers.[11]