Cisco Router as TFTP server

How many of us know that we can make our router/switch a TFTP server. It can be used to copy system image/file from one router/switch to another.

Let’s assume you have to copy image from your TFTP server to 10 switches located at a remote site where the WAN connection is very slow. In such scenario, we can copy system image from our TFTP server to only one switch and then we can copy the image from this switch to all other switches. It makes the file transfer fast and efficient.

I will use the below topology to explain how a router can act as TFTP server. We have two routers R1 and R2 connected via Fastethernet0/0. I will make R2 as TFTP server and copy IOS file “cat4500-ipbasek9-mz.122-31.SGA1.bin” from R2 to R1

Step 1: Check the connectivity between the devices using ping or traceroute.

R1#ping 10.0.0.2 Type escape sequence to abort. Sending 5, 100-byte ICMP Echos to 10.0.0.2, timeout is 2 seconds: !!!!! Success rate is 100 percent (5/5), round-trip min/avg/max = 20/32/60 ms

Step 2: Check the size of image on R2.

R2# show bootflash: all 1   .D image        C3C7E4B4  A465EC   28 10249580 Jan 28 2005 20:15:00 +01:00 cat4000-i9s-mz.122-18.EW.bin 2   .. image        D92052BB 162A674   32 12468232 Mar 16 2005 07:39:05 +01:00 cat4000-i9s-mz[1].122-20.EWA.bin 3   .. image        F843DD91 224544C   35 12692824 Nov 27 2007 21:27:47 +01:00 cat4500-ipbasek9-mz.122-31.SGA1.bin 4   .. ascii text   43D62D10 22491D4    3    15624 Mar 18 2013 08:43:13 +01:00 hdr 25914924 bytes available (35426772 bytes used)

Step 3: Check the available memory space on R1.

R1# show bootflash: all

Step 4: Configure R2 as TFTP server using command Tftp-server:

R2(config)#tftp-server bootflash:cat4500-ipbasek9-mz.122-31.SGA1.bin

Step 5: Copy Image on R1 from R2.

R1#copy flash: tftp: Source filename []? cat4500-ipbasek9-mz.122-31.SGA1.bin Address or name of remote host []? 10.0.0.2

Step 6: Verify if the image has been copied successfully.

R1#Show bootflash: all