VTY access-class accepts extended and named access lists

You could limit terminal access to a router with an access-class in line configuration command for a very long time (since, at least, IOS release 10.0). However, the access-class command only accepted standard access-lists, allowing you to restrict access solely based on source IP addresses. In the meantime, this feature quietly got upgraded to support extended access lists. In the IOS release 12.4, the command even accepts (undocumented !) named access lists.

These new features give you the ability to implement interesting policies, for example:
  • Telnet access is only allowed from the network management station.
  • SSH access is allowed from anywhere within internal network

You can also use the extended access list logging functionality, making it possible to log every connection attempt to the router.

For example, the configuration ...

ip access-list extended TerminalAccess
permit tcp host 10.0.0.2 any eq telnet log
permit tcp any any eq 22 log
deny tcp any any log
!
line vty 0 4
access-class TerminalAccess in
... would log any terminal access to the router with messages similar to the one below.
%SEC-6-IPACCESSLOGP: list TerminalAccess denied tcp 10.0.0.3(1057) -> 0.0.0.0(23), 1 packet
%SEC-6-IPACCESSLOGP: list TerminalAccess permitted tcp 10.0.0.2(1058) -> 0.0.0.0(23), 1 packet

9 comments:

  1. very good tip, simple but useful.

    Thanks
  2. Standard acls also provide logging, don't they?
  3. You're right, now they do. Long time since I've last checked :)
  4. Any one tried using a specific destination ip address rather than "any"
    i.e.
    permit tcp host 10.0.0.2 host 1.2.3.4 eq telnet log
  5. This was actually added in at-least 12.2 (tested), still wish you could specify a destination
  6. Hi everyone..
    I am new and working as L1 support.
    My question is " why we need access-class to restrict telnet?" we can do all kind of filtering with standard and extended ACL.
    Thankyou.
    Replies
    1. In principle you're right. However, try achieving that with ACLs on a router with hundreds of (sub)interfaces or switch with tens of ports.
  7. Thanks, it was helpful
  8. Configure an access list to only allow Native & Management VLAN to SSH to the routers. Needs to be a numbered list
Add comment
Sidebar