System and Profile Parameters

In addition to user-defined profiles, there are three permanent profiles, Internal, LAN, and Standard. The Internal profile stores parameters used to communicate between the LAN and WAN ports on the Cisco 700 series router. The LAN profile stores parameters that configure the LAN port on the router. The Standard profile is the default profile. If authentication is not required and the destination device you are connecting to does not have a user-defined profile, the router uses the Standard profile.

Profiles and Connections

Profiles are either active or inactive. An active profile creates a virtual connection to the remote device associated with the profile. A virtual connection is a connection without physical channels. After creating a virtual connection, an on-demand call can be made to the associated remote device to establish a physical connection.

A physical connection is a dynamically created pipeline of packets from the Cisco 700 series router to a switch on the WAN. All connections are associated with the profile that defines the configuration of the connection.

Virtual and physical connections behave similarly; the difference is that physical connections forward packets to the WAN. Virtual connections monitor packet traffic on the LAN until a demand filter “sees” that a packet is destined for the WAN and initiates a call to the switch, opening the physical connection. Once the call is established, the virtual connection becomes an active physical connection, and the packets move through the pipeline.

System and Profile Parameters

The system is composed of both system mode parameters, user-defined profiles, and permanent profiles. System mode parameters can be changed only in system mode. The prompt indicates you are in system mode by displaying nothing or the router name. An example of the prompt is shown below:

Router_name>

If you are in profile mode, the profile name appears on the prompt, separated from the system name by a colon (:). An example of the prompt is shown below:

Router_name:Profile>

2-2Cisco700 Series Router Configuration Guide

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Cisco Systems 700 manual System and Profile Parameters, Profiles and Connections