Question

Under what conditions would you want to change (either upgrade or downgrade) the IOS of a network device? Give at least two specific examples and support your answers.

Answer 1

upgrade based on these factors:

• For better features and new patches
• To feel the new look and functionalities
• Bugs that are like malware by the user applications that might provide a backdoor to the hackers which will lead to complete loss of private data
• Vulnerabilities due to which the entire system gets compromised, son for that we need keep upgrading for the system for the new patches
• Attaining new features not currently available-- new cards/modules have a "first supported in" IOS version which could be higher than what you have running
• Matching versions on more recently deployed and similar hardware

downgrade factors:

• The organization has a policy to only run tested/QA'd versions and new equipment came with a more recent release.
• Some testing processes might be done only with below versions
• Org has a policy against running anything other than GD
• Or even the former version has been really good compared to current one in terms of features and functionalities
• In some cases the updated versions might fail to provide the better features compared to the earlier one's and more over comes with some bugs