Transferring Files via SCP on Cisco Routers

Introduction

If you are anything like me, this is one of those things you likely do so infrequently that you forget how to do it virtually every time you need to. To save any head scratching next time here is a nice succinct reminder.

Solution

You must have SSH protocol configured to use SCP. The commands required are as follows:

ip domain-name <some.domain>
hostname <routername>
crypto key generate rsa general-keys modulus 2048
ip ssh version 2
username <someuser> privilege 15 secret <somepassword>
aaa new-model
aaa authentication login default local
aaa authorization exec default local

To enable the scp server, you need to use the following command in IOS:

ip scp server enable

To download a file from the router:

scp username@5.5.5.5:flash:/somefile .

To upload a file to the router:

scp c880data-universalk9-mz.157-3.M4a.bin username@5.5.5.5:flash:/c880data-universalk9-mz.157-3.M4a.bin

Hope it helps save you some time.