Chapter 6      Configuring the System
Changing IP Information
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Catalyst 2900 Series XL and Catalyst 3500 Series XL Software Configuration Guide
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You must specify the TFTP server name in the DHCP server lease database. You 
must also specify the TFTP server name-to-IP-address mapping in the DNS server 
database.
The TFTP server can be on the same or a different LAN as the switch. If it is on 
a different LAN, the switch must be able to access it through a relay device or a 
router. For more information, see the “Configuring the Relay Device” section on 
page 6-9.
If the configuration filename is provided in the DHCP server reply, the 
configuration files for a switch can be spread over multiple TFTP servers. 
However, if the configuration filename is not provided, then the configuration 
files must reside on a single TFTP server.
For CLI procedures, refer to the Cisco IOS Release 12.0 documentation on 
Cisco.com for additional information and CLI procedures.
Configuring the Domain Name and the DNS
Each unique IP address can have a host name associated with it. The IOS software 
maintains a cache of host name-to-address mappings for use by the EXEC mode 
connect, telnet, and ping commands, and related Telnet support operations. This 
cache speeds the process of converting names to addresses.
IP defines a hierarchical naming scheme that allows a device to be identified by 
its location or domain. Domain names are pieced together with periods (.) as the 
delimiting characters. For example, Cisco Systems is a commercial organization 
that IP identifies by a com domain name, so its domain name is cisco.com. A 
specific device in this domain, the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) system for 
example, is identified as ftp.cisco.com.
To keep track of domain names, IP has defined the concept of a Domain Name 
Server (DNS), which holds a cache (or database) of names mapped to IP 
addresses. To map domain names to IP addresses, you must first identify the host 
names and then specify a name server and enable the DNS, the Internet’s global 
naming scheme that uniquely identifies network devices. 
You can specify a default domain name that the software uses to complete domain 
name requests. You can specify either a single domain name or a list of domain 
names. When you specify a domain name, any IP host name without a domain 
name will have that domain name appended to it before being added to the host 
table.