SDM problem on 1811

Oh...I should mention...I know there are other ways to edit the config, such as CP Express or Cisco Professional Express, however all of our routers must be identical as far a software/IOS loads, so I really need to figure out why SDM breaks. Thanks:)

I probably shouldn't reply since I am just guessing...

I have hardly used SDM since it has always, in various incarnations, been very sensitive to the exact configuration of the browser and and the PC.

I have spent hours trying to get it working and have failed. I also have got it working, but over time it was too unreliable to bother with. There was no way of knowing if I would be able to use it tomorrow other than perhaps keeping a dedicated PC all warmed up and ready to go and that has not been a luxury available to me.

No other web application that I am aware of has behaved in this way.

I therefore gave up on it years ago - forever.

So, not knowing exactly how you are using it, and not knowing if it has been fixed recently, perhaps the problem is not with the router but due to some change in the PC?

Or of course conversely, perhaps the reason that I could not get the SDM to go was due to the router config not being 'sdm compliant'.

Either way, not something I need to be bothering with when there are customers that need their networks to work.

Thanks for the info...seems that SDM is very touchy, but I'm pretty certain my PC is ok. I made sure to avoid any java or other plugin upgrades and this PC always works with other Cisco SDM devices, only the few where I make some changes manually, but not always seem to get in a state where they will not work. Personally I dont' like SDM, but I've been given the task of investigating to see if we can keep everything working the same (unfortunately includes SDM) as much as possible.

There must be something that causes it to fail. Maybe like you mentioned, one of my changes may not have been SDM compliant? Never was aware of SDM compliant, but suppose that could be something I could try to find.

Sorry, 'sdm compliant' was just something I made up.

As you say, I found it very touchy too.

You should raise a TAC case against this issue if you have support.

You could get a smartnet contract against a particular router (choose a cheap one) and then cisco will have to fix it for you.

Seems like a plan to me.

When I got my 871W router, I tried the SDM stuff. Pop up windows galore, and when you want to setup Wi-Fi, it goes back to the main browser window for standard HTML forms to setup the wi-fi. Looks to me that this was written by very separate groups who didn't coordinate efforts and it truly doesn't look professional. Gave up on it very quickly.

If you really need all your routers to be indendically setup, I would strongly recommend that you use TFTP (or whatever is available on your router) to move the configs to a central computer where each config can be held and compared against others to ensure they are not different apart from their IP adrress or other router indetification stuff.

You cant really compare configs of 2 different routers with SDM (for one thing , SDM doesn't show all of the settings).

Seems that SDM isn't a very good solution. Maybe I can encourage them to just drop it and work with command line all the way.

Thanks for all the comments:)

I setup everything up on my 2811 routers with cli, then only use SDM for maintenance rule adds, changes, deletes.

Java updates, popups, browsers all seem to make SDM and ASDM very difficult at times.

Seems that SDM isn't a very good solution. Maybe I can encourage them to just drop it and work with command line all the way.

Thanks for all the comments:)