IOS: Interoperable Operating System

What is IOS? (No, not Apple's iOS)

IOS is built from OpenOS and has networking functions built in. On top of all the networking functions (and some other ones), the packet processing and routing (if applicable) happen.

On IOS there are 3 processes (ex: router):

• rStart
• rBackground
• rShell

rStart initializes everything. Makes sure directories are there, RAM management, Modem initialization, etc.

rBackground is where the magic happens. All the routing, VLAN, Firewall rules, etc, happen here.

rShell is where the front end shell is. This shell is minimal as it only applies to the certain IOS functions for the software loaded.