Hello,

Although I have not done this, I believe it can be used for such a purpose. Normally what is meant with "management use only" is that traffic forwarding from the port towards another port on the same router and vice versa is not supported. Traffic destined to the router (like management traffic is, downloading image is supposed to be a management operation) should be ok. The only doubt I have is whether routing can be enable for it, but even if this is not possible, you could overcome it with tricks such as static routes and proxy-arp if this port is supposed to arp for anything (even if in different subnet with the TFTP server). If you try this procedure, please tell us about the outcome, because the documentation is not very clear about how this port can be used.

Kind Regards,

M.

p.s. In the GSR for example, the relevant note for the management port (can be found at: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/routers/12000/12016s/installation/guide/hfricgir.html#wp1135838 )

says "Ethernet ports are primarily used as a Telnet port into the Cisco 12000 series router, and for booting or accessing Cisco IOS software images over a network to which an Ethernet port is directly connected. Cisco Express Forwarding (CEF) functions are switched off by default for security reasons. We strongly caution you to consider the security implications of switching on CEF routing functions on these ports." So, I would expect similar functionality for the NPE-G2 port.