Occasionally, during bootup of Cisco hardware through Cisco IOS software, error messages similar to these are displayed:

  • %Error opening tftp://255.255.255.255/network-confg (Socket error)
  • %Error opening tftp://255.255.255.255/cisconet.cfg (Socket error)
  • %Error opening tftp://255.255.255.255/3620-confg (Socket error)
  • %Error opening tftp://255.255.255.255/3620.cfg (Socket error)

These error messages are related to the default service configuration option built into Cisco IOS software, which attempts to access the service configuration files from a network Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) server.

In order to disable this feature, issue the no service config global command.

Router#config terminal Enter configuration commands, one per line. Router(config)#no service config Router(config)#exit Router#copy running-config startup-config

These error messages no longer appear at the next bootup of the router.