Table Of Contents

Planning and Creating Communities

Planning a Community

Member and Candidate Characteristics

Community Device Limits

Automatic Discovery of Candidates and Members

Community Names

Hostnames

Passwords

Communication Protocols

Community Information

Creating a Community

Adding a Group of Devices

Adding Devices One at a Time

Verifying a Community

Planning and Creating Communities

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This chapter provides the concepts and procedures for planning and creating communities by using Configuration Assistant. For information on using it to configure communities, refer to the online help.

Planning a Community

This section describes the guidelines, requirements, and caveats that you should understand before you create a community.

Member and Candidate Characteristics

Members are network devices that belong to a community. Candidates are network devices that do not.

To join a community, a candidate must

•Be supported by Configuration Assistant

•Have an IP address

•Have HTTP or HTTPS enabled on the default ports.

Community Device Limits

The combined number of these device types cannot exceed 25:

•Catalyst Express switches.

•Cisco 800 Series routers.

•Unified Communications 500 Series platforms.

•Cisco SR520 Series Routers

•Cisco 526 Wireless Express Controllers.

•Cisco 521 Wireless Express autonomous access points. These are fully featured standalone access points that do not require a Cisco 526 Mobility Controller.

•HWIC access points. These are high-speed WAN interface cards with an integrated access point for Unified Communications 500 Series platforms.

There is no limit on the number of IP phones or lightweight access points—access points managed by a WLAN controller—in a community. nor is there a limit on the number of communities that Configuration Assistant can manage.

Besides the overall limit of 25 devices, there are these device-type limits:

•Catalyst Express switches—no more than 15

•Cisco 800 Series routers plus Unified Communications 500 Series platforms—no more than 5

•Cisco 526 Wireless Express Controllers—no more than 2

•Cisco 521 autonomous access points plus HWIC access points—no more than 3

If the overall limit or a device-type limit is exceeded, you cannot manage the community. You must remove devices until the limit is no longer exceeded.

Automatic Discovery of Candidates and Members

Beginning with the IP address for a starting device and the port numbers for HTTPS and HTTP, Configuration Assistant uses CDP to compile a list of community candidates that are within four CDP hops of the starting device. Configuration Assistant can discover candidate and member devices across multiple networks and VLANs if they have valid IP addresses. See the "Member and Candidate Characteristics" section for a list of requirements that network devices must meet in order to be discovered.

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Note Do not disable CDP on candidates, members, or any network devices that you might want Configuration Assistant to discover.

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You can edit the list of discovered devices to fit your needs and to add them to the community. If Configuration Assistant does not discover a network device, you can manually add the device.

For instructions on adding discovered devices to a community or manually adding devices to a community, see the "Adding Devices One at a Time" section.

Community Names

When you create a community, Configuration Assistant requires that you assign a name to it. The name can contain up to 64 alphanumeric characters and is not case sensitive.

Hostnames

You do not need to assign a hostname to a community member, and Configuration Assistant does not assign one by default. However, Cisco IOS assigns the hostname Switch to switches without a hostname. Therefore, you might want to assign hostnames to switches to avoid confusing them.

Passwords

When connecting to a community, Configuration Assistant prompts you for each unique password that has already been assigned for members of the community. Configuration Assistant attempts to use these passwords to connect to other devices. You are prompted for a password only if the previously entered password does not work for a device.

For example, if a community has ten members, and five members share one password and the other five share a different password, Configuration Assistant prompts you twice, once for each password. Configuration Assistant does not save the passwords to your PC, so it prompts you for the passwords each time that you attempt to connect to a community.

Communication Protocols

Configuration Assistant uses HTTPS, HTTP, Telnet, and SSH to communicate with devices. It tries to use HTTPS when discover neighboring devices and when devices are manually addedto a community. If HTTPS fails, it tries HTTP.

The HTTPS port is fixed at 443; the HTTP port defaults to 80. You can specify a different HTTP port when you create a community. Afterward, you use the HTTP Port window to change the HTTP port. The port settings for both HTTPS and HTTP must be the same for all the members of a community.

Community Information

Configuration Assistant saves all individual device information, such as the IP address, the hostname, and the communication protocol, to your local PC. When Configuration Assistant connects to a community, it uses the locally saved data to rediscover the member devices.

If you try to use a different PC to manage an existing community, none of the member device information is available. You need to create the community again and add the same member devices.

Creating a Community

You can create a community in these ways:

•Add a group of devices to a community

•Add devices one at a time

You should verify that the community contains the devices that you think it contains. This section tells you how to perform these tasks.

Adding a Group of Devices

Follow these steps to build a list of candidate devices and to add them to a community:

1. Start Configuration Assistant, and select Create community in the Connect window. Click Connect.

2. In the Create Community window, enter a name for the community.

3. Click the Advanced button if you want to set an HTTP port other than 80, the default port. Enter the HTTP port number that you want to use. Click OK.

4. Enter a seed IP address, the beginning and ending IP addresses of an address range, or the IP address of a subnet. (A seed IP address implicitly requests the discovery of the device with that address and the discovery of connected devices.)

5. Start the discovery process.

6. In the Devices list, deselect the candidate devices that you want to remove, and click Remove.

Adding Devices One at a Time

Use either of these ways to add devices one at a time:

•In the Create Community window, enter the IP address for a single device, and start the discovery process.

•In the Topology view, right-click a candidate icon, and select Add to Community.

Verifying a Community

Follow these steps to verify the community:

1. Choose Monitor > View > Topology to display the Topology view.

2. Choose Monitor > Reports > Inventory to display an inventory of the devices in the community.

This summary includes device model numbers, serial numbers, software versions, IP information, and location.

3. Choose Monitor > View > Front Panel to display the Front Panel view.