Help understanding IOS versions

[John Blakley]

All,

I know that Cisco provides the following:

ED - early deployment

GD - general deployment

LD - Limited deployment

Can anyone tell me what the stages are?

Is ED released first, then turned into LD and finally GD?

The reason that I ask is that I need to update our stack, but management is saying that they only want a GD release. Understood, but the download area for the 3750G only has EDs available for download.

Thanks,

John

[John Blakley]

Scratch that. I found this:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/iosswrel/ps8802/ps6968/ps6350/product_bulletin_cisco_ios_software_gd_program_retirement.html

I guess it's only ED from here on out.

I wish I could rate myself =)

John

[Jon Marshall]

"I wish I could rate myself =)"

You can't but we can :-). Thanks for letting us know.

Jon

[John Blakley]

LOL! Thanks Jon =)

[Jon Marshall]

John

Have a look at this link which explains the meanings -

http://www.cisco.com/kobayashi/library/iosplanner/reldesignation.html

You need a Cisco login to view.

As of 12.4 GD's are no longer being released. Not sure about the 3750 train but you'll be lucky to find a GD.

Jon

[Joseph W. Doherty]

Besides lost of LD/GD, what Cisco is doing with "mainline" code is now different too.

Mainline code, was feature frozen with the first release (initially a LD release), all the later releases were fixes (first later release considered really stable was GD). With 12.4 "mainline", new software and/or hardware features may be inserted into later releases (much like what was done with "T" trains). (This is also why you see so many letter suffix 12.4 releases; they should be just fixes.)