What Is The Purpose Of The Startup Configuration File On A Cisco Router?

What is the purpose of the startup configuration file on a Cisco router?
Let us start from the basic definition of what is cisco router. We all know that a router is the type of internetworking device that provides communication between the logical networks. The default gateway of all devices in the local area network is the LAN IP router.

The router can find the best route path for the networks. In routers, they are divided into two types there are hardware routers and software routers. The cisco router comes under the hardware router. Let us learn step by step process of the cisco router configuration.

In routing, we transfer the packets between the different networks. There are different operating systems of the router like cisco, juniper, etc. Through a cross cable, two different IP addresses are getting connected.
One of the steps in the cisco router configuration is the startup configuration. The startup configuration is used for different purposes like it performs the basic operation and hardware components of the device.

The startup configuration contains the commands that are initially used to configure the router. It also contains the commands that the IOS router currently using.

The startup configuration uses many commands and this file is stored in the NVRAM file. Now let us discuss what is startup configuration file means. The startup configuration file is used to configure the software. It is used during the system startup. There are two different configuration files. If we want to change the running configuration by using the configure terminal EXEC command. It cannot save the configuration, by using the copy running configuration.

If we want to change the startup configuration file, we can perform two different things. The first is we can save the running configuration file by using the copy running-config EXEC command in the startup configuration file. The second thing is we can copy the configuration file. from the special file server in the startup configuration.

The main aim of the cisco router configuration files is to configure the router by holding the commands. As we discussed earlier, there are two different configuration files. The one is the router config file. In this router config file, it can store the changes in the configuration only when the router is up.

The RAM (Read-only access memory) stores the running configuration file. But there is a disadvantage in the running configuration file is that the changes we made in the running configuration file don’t get retained after the rebooting is performed. We have a chance to back up or to save the running configuration file into the startup configuration file that runs several commands.

These commands are called IOS commands. In the NVRAM or in the TFTP server we can able to save and backup the running configuration file. We use the command copy running configuration startup configuration, in order to copy our running configuration. Therefore the main purpose of the startup configuration file in the cisco router is to contain the commands that are used to initially configure the router.