# Could FreeBSD be installed on a Cisco ISR router?



## PacketMan (Feb 20, 2015)

Just curious if I should even try this someday. Can FreeBSD be compiled to run on a Cisco Integrated Services Router (ISR), say a model like the 3800 series?

Application would be routing and firewall.  Just curious.


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## Terry_Kennedy (Feb 23, 2015)

PacketMan said:


> Just curious if I should even try this someday. Can FreeBSD be compiled to run on a Cisco Integrated Services Router (ISR), say a model like the 3800 series?


The ISR38xx uses a Broadcom BCM1250 MIPS64 CPU. MIPS is a Tier 3 architecture on FreeBSD. That means that there is some support for the architecture, but not necessarily enough to boot on unknown (but generic) hardware. The ISR38xx uses a number of custom Cisco chips in addition to an AMD 8131 bus controller and Broadcom BCM5703S Ethernet controllers with various BCM PHY chips. This is unlikely to be a supported (or even working) combination of hardware.

The newest Cisco platform that could boot something substantial was the M68K-based 25xx family. There was a uClinux port for it, but I believe it has been defunct for some time.

There is some information here, but it is rather out-of-date (no updates since 2012) and most of the links take you to parked-domain advertising sites.

I guess my question would be "why would you want to do this?" - Cisco IOS delivers everything you need (and more), and the router probably came with a copy installed on the flash card. You can sometimes obtain the latest software from Cisco without a service contract - you just need to find a Cisco security bulletin that affects the ISR38xx and follow the directions in the "Obtaining fixed software" section.

And if it is the experience of building your own router that you want, you can outperform ISR38xx-class hardware easily with x86 / amd64-architecture boxes. A Dell PowerEdge R710 will run rings around older Cisco hardware, and you can simply pop a FreeBSD distribution disk in the DVD drive and be up and running in almost no time.


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## PacketMan (Feb 23, 2015)

No good reason to do it, just curious. Thought it would be cool, and if possible thought it might be fun to kick the can and learn something along the way.


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