You want to load configuration commands via the Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP).
You can use the copy tftp: command to configure the router via the TFTP:
Router1#copy tftp://172.25.1.1/NEWCONFIG running-config
Destination filename [running-config]? <enter>
Accessing tftp://172.25.1.1/NEWCONFIG...
Loading NEWCONFIG from 172.25.1.1 (via FastEthernet0/0.1): !
[OK - 24 bytes]
24 bytes copied in 0.192 secs (125 bytes/sec)
Router1#
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Generally, most people configure their routers using Telnet and the configure terminal command. For large configuration changes, people tend to resort to cutting and pasting a large set of commands. While this method works, it is inefficient and slow, particularly if you have to configure large numbers of routers. When you use TFTP to download a large set of configuration commands, the router doesn't need to echo each character to your screen, which reduces the overhead and increases the speed.
In our example, we configured the router by making it download the file called NEWCONFIG from the server at 172.25.1.1 using TFTP. The router copies the entire file via TFTP before entering the commands into the running configuration. This is extremely useful because using some commands in the middle of a configuration could disrupt your access to the router�but the rest of the commands might fix the problem. If you tried to enter them manually using Telnet and configure terminal, you would simply lock yourself out of the router. A typical example of this problem happens when you replace an active access list. When you enter the first line, the router puts an implicit deny all at the end, which could break your session. However, entering commands using TFTP avoids this problem.
The last line of any configuration file that you copy into the router like this should be the end command. This lets the router know that it has reached the end of the file. If you don't do this, the router will still accept all of the commands normally, but it will put the following error into its logs:
Jan 19 11:26:38: %PARSER-4-BADCFG: Unexpected end of configuration file.
If you have the end command in your configuration file, seeing this message will tell you that the router didn't get all of the configuration commands. But if you don't terminate the file properly, it's impossible to tell if the transfer was successful.
Instead of TFTP, you can use the FTP protocol to download configuration files. FTP has a number of advantages over TFTP in terms of reliability and security. Recipe 1.14 shows how to load configuration commands using FTP instead of TFTP.
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