Bits or bytes – Cisco, you should know that!
Lets look at output of booting process of Cisco 3925 router
System Bootstrap, Version 15.0(1r)M8, RELEASE SOFTWARE (fc1) Technical Support: http://www.cisco.com/techsupport Copyright (c) 2010 by cisco Systems, Inc. Total memory size = 1024 MB - DIMM0 = 512 MB, DIMM1 = 512 MB Field Upgradeable ROMMON Integrity test _______________________________________ ROM: Digitally Signed Release Software CISCO3925-CHASSIS with C3900-SPE100/K9 with 1048576 Kbytes of main memory Main memory is configured to 72/72(dimm 0/1) bit mode with ECC enabled Upgrade ROMMON initialized program load complete, entry point: 0x4000000, size: 0x18fa0 program load complete, entry point: 0x4000000, size: 0x18fa0 IOS Image Load Test ___________________ Digitally Signed Release Software program load complete, entry point: 0x4000000, size: 0x34b73a0 Self decompressing the image : ####################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################### [OK] Smart Init is enabled smart init is sizing iomem TYPE MEMORY_REQ HWIC Slot 0 0x00200000 HWIC Slot 1 0x00200000 PVDM 0 0x00200000 PVDM 1 0x00200000 SM Slot 1 0x00600000 OIR memory 0x00600000 Onboard devices & buffer pools 0x0230F000 ----------------------------------------------- TOTAL: 0x0370F000 Rounded IOMEM up to: 56Mb. Using 5 percent iomem. [56Mb/1024Mb]
Ok Cisco developers, you should know the difference between megabytes [MB] and megabites [Mb], right? Doesn’t seems so :/
I looked deeper if this “typo” is only made on bootup messages. Unfortunately not.
C3925-WLC-pwo#show memory statistics Head Total(b) Used(b) Free(b) Lowest(b) Largest(b) Processor 11A4B8E4 769345308 28055316 741289992 719013612 683698364 I/O 3C800000 58720256 19334640 39385616 39382912 39381980
Output of this command suggests that measurement is made in bites not bytes but we all know what units are used. It’s not like we all don’t know how to read outputs, it’s just networking company as Cisco should take care of using proper units in outputs.