Table Of Contents
What Is Cisco Configuration Assistant?
Characteristics of a Community
What Is Cisco Configuration Assistant?
Configuration Assistant is an application that manages standalone devices and device groups, called communities, from anywhere in your intranet. Using its graphical interface, you can
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Set up Cisco® Smart Business Communications System (SBCS) devices
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To perform any of these tasks, you select the appropriate feature from the Configuration Assistant feature bar, as shown in the "Feature Bar" section on page 2-4
Characteristics of a Community
A community can contain up to 25 connected network devices. Each device must have an assigned IP address. Configuration Assistant uses the automatic discovery capability of Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP) to find eligible network devices and to add them to a community. If devices do not have CDP enabled, you can still create a community and manually add the devices.
The main reason for creating a community is to manage Cisco devices in the same logical group, regardless of their physical locations and the software installed on the devices. You can create, modify, delete, and manage multiple communities.
With Configuration Assistant, you can communicate securely with every member in a community. If a community member fails, you can continue to manage the other members.
Most types of network devices—routers, switches, wireless LAN controllers—can belong to a community. For a specific list of eligible devices, see the release notes. For information on creating communities, see Chapter 4, "Planning and Creating Communities."
Viewing a Community
Configuration Assistant gives you two graphical views of a community:
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To see examples of these views, see the "Topology View" section on page 2-2 and the "Front Panel View" section on page 2-3.