Cisco Command Christmas Calendar #9: Ctrl-Shift-6

Okay, so this one is not really a command. It's a shortcut. The Ctrl-Shift-6 has a couple of great use cases. First, it can be used to interrupt an IOS process such as ping/traceroute or even the DNS lookup process from the previous post. Example:

R10#showrun
Translating "showrun"...domain server (255.255.255.255) [Ctrl-Shift-6]

% Name lookup aborted


% Bad IP address or host name

% Unknown command or computer name, or unable to find computer address
R10#


R10#ping 10.10.10.10
Type escape sequence to abort.
Sending 5, 100-byte ICMP Echos to 10.10.10.10, timeout is 2 seconds:
.. [Ctrl-Shift-6]
Success rate is 0 percent (0/2)

Note that only two ping packets were sent before the Ctrl-Shift-6 was issued.

The second use case of the Ctrl-Shift-6 shortcut is to suspend a Telnet session. If you press Ctrl-Shift-6 and then x, the device will suspend the current Telnet connection and return to the system command prompt.

R2#telnet 202.4.210.10
Trying 202.4.210.10 ... Open


R10#
R10# [Ctrl-Shift-6, x]

R2#

Now if you simply hit Enter, the device will resume the Telnet connection.

R2# [Enter]
[Resuming connection 1 to 202.4.210.10 ... ]

R10#