Primary Command Modes

As a security feature, the Cisco IOS software separates management access into the following two command modes:

• User EXEC Mode - This mode has limited capabilities but is useful for basic operations. It allows only a limited number of basic monitoring commands but does not allow the execution of any commands that might change the configuration of the device. The user EXEC mode is identified by the CLI prompt that ends with the > symbol.

• Privileged EXEC Mode - To execute configuration commands, a network administrator must access privileged EXEC mode. Higher configuration modes, like global configuration mode, can only be reached from privileged EXEC mode. The privileged EXEC mode can be identified by the prompt ending with the # symbol.

The table in the figure summarizes the two modes and displays the default CLI prompts of a Cisco switch and router.

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