Swee

The article that Wong mentions is interesting and if you read it carefully it is accurate. But I wish that it had made it more clear that the show inventory command or the ability to get the information via SNMP works on the ISR routers but on very little else.

If you can physically inspect the router you can get the serial number from the sticker on the chassis. And for a long time that was the only reliable way to get the serial number.

As Cisco has begun to put more emphasis on identifying equipment by serial number they have begun to give a reliable way to get the number remotely. But it will be a long time before we can count on being able to find the serial number on all our equipment.

I was especially disappointed to discover that the show inventory command is implemented on some equipment but does not return correct output - you can execute the command and the output looks normal but the value that is gives for the serial number is not the correct value. I learned this lesson the hard way: I opened a case with TAC on a 7206 and as part of the case opening I gave the serial number that I had gotten from show inventory. However the TAC engineer informed me that the value that I gave was not a valid serial number for a 7206. When we checked the serial number on the chassis sticker it was very different from the number returned by show inventory. I wish that Cisco would not implement a command on a platform if it will not operate correctly on that platform.

HTH

Rick