Cisco Certification Introduction To ISDN Part I

Cisco Certification

Cisco Certification Central

Home | Article List | Submit An Article | Contact Us


Cisco Certification Introduction To ISDN Part I

From the CCNA to the CCIE, ISDN is one of the most important technolgies you'll work with. It's also very common in the field; ISDN is frequently used as a backup connection in case an organization's Frame Relay connections go down. Therefore, it's important to know ISDN basics not only for your particular exam, but for job success.

ISDN is used between two Cisco routers that have BRI or PRI interfaces. Basically, with ISDN one of the routers places a phone call to the other router. It is vital to understand not only what causes one router to dial another, but what makes the link go down.

Why? Since ISDN is basically a phone call from one router to another, you're getting billed for that phone call -- by the minute. If one of your routers dials another, and never hangs up, the connection can theoretically last for days or weeks. The network manager then receives an astronomical phone bill, which leads to bad things for everyone involved!

Cisco routers use the concept of interesting traffic to decide when one router should call another. By default, there is no interesting traffic, so if you don't define any, the routers will never call each other.



Interesting traffic is defined with the dialer-list command. This command offers many options, so you can tie interesting traffic down not only to what protocols can bring the link up, but what the source, destination, or even port number must be for the line to come up.

One common misconception occurs once that link is up. Interesting traffic is required to bring the link up, but by default, any traffic can then cross the ISDN link.

What makes the link come down? Again, the concept of interesting traffic is used. Cisco routers have an idle-timeout setting for their dialup interfaces. If interesting traffic does not cross the link for the amount of time specified by the idle-timeout, the link comes down.

To summarize: Interesting traffic brings the link up; by default, any traffic can cross the link once it's up; a lack of interesting traffic is what brings the link down.



In Part II of this tutorial, we'll take a look at some common scenarios that make the ISDN link stay up, and what can be done about it.

Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933, is the owner of The Bryant Advantage, home of freeCCNA andCCNP tutorials, The Ultimate CCNA Study Package, and Ultimate CCNP Study Packages. For a FREE copy of his latest e-books, ,How To Pass The CCNA, and ,How To Pass The CCNP,, visit the website and download your free copies. You can also get FREE CCNA and CCNP exam questions every day! Pass theCCNA exam with The Bryant Advantage!

 

Full List of Articles
 

Latest Cisco Certification News:

  1. Softchoice Achieves Cisco Silver Partner Status in Canada

    Softchoice Corporation , a leading North American provider of IT solutions and services, is proud to announce it has achieved Silver Certification Partner Status from Cisco Inc. The designation provides Softchoice with valuable resources to support the delivery of advanced Cisco solutions on behalf of customers across Canada.

    Read More ...

  2. MTS Allstream Achieves Cisco Master Unified Communications Specialization

    MTS Allstream Inc. is pleased to announce it has achieved the Master Unified Communications Specialization from Cisco. This specialization recognizes MTS Allstream as having fulfilled the training requirements and program prerequisites to sell, deploy and support highly sophisticated applications-based Cisco unified communications solutions.

    Read More ...

  3. Small Biz Group born of Cisco-Linksys merger

    Said Sanjeev Gupta, Linksys Channel Director APAC, "This is a win-win situation for Linksys partners because they will now have access to Cisco's channel programs and training modules which will better equip them to carry the existing Linksys products to the small and medium business (SMB) customers on an integrated platform."

    Read More ...

  4. Microsoft sues site to stop certification test leaks

    A federal court in Connecticut has ordered a certification test help-site to stop publishing Microsoft-related materials after the software maker sued the company, claiming that it was selling actual certification exam questions. In a preliminary injunction signed Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Warren Eginton ordered Pass4sure.com and its parent company, Freetech Services, to stop ...

    Read More ...

  5. Comstor Introduces Cisco Smart Care Service in Europe, Helping Resellers Drive Next Generation Service Opportunities ...

    Westcon Group, Inc., the leading specialty distributor in networking, convergence, security and mobility, today announced it will offer Cisco Smart Care Service to the European reseller market.

    Read More ...

  6. Microsoft wins ruling on certification tests

    Pass4sure sued over certification test leaks A federal court in Connecticut has ordered a certification test help-site to stop publishing Microsoft-related materials after the software maker sued the company, claiming that it was selling actual certification exam questions.

    Read More ...

  7. Tuesday, the 19th of August 2008

    TWO local students are hoping to become Cambodia's first certified Cisco Systems trainers, according to First Cambodia (FC), a computer systems company.

    Read More ...

Cisco Certification

Cisco Certification Introduction To ISDN Part I