Send messages to other users on a Cisco Router

Contributed by qmchenry June 18, 2006  
Tagged: Cisco router

Multiple users can be logged into a Cisco router at the same time. It may be necessary (or sometimes just fun) to send a text message to one or all users on a router. For example, if you are preparing to reload the router, admin etiquette dictates that you should warn other users.

To send a message to all users on the current device use the send * command with administrator privileges:

send *
Enter message, end with CTRL/Z; abort with CTRL/C:
The sky is falling, so I'm going to reload the router in 5 minutes.
It's been nice knowing you.

^Z


Using the show users command described in this recipe, you can get the line number of a specific user. If the user is logged into line 66, use this command to send them a message:

send 66


The command to send a message to the user on the console is:

send console 0