A router MUST include both in-band and out-of-band mechanisms to allow the network manager to reload, stop, and restart the router. A router SHOULD also contain a mechanism (such as a watchdog timer) which will reboot the router automatically if it hangs due to a software or hardware fault.
A router SHOULD IMPLEMENT a mechanism for dumping the contents of a router's memory (and/or other state useful for vendor debugging after a crash), and either saving them on a stable storage device local to the router or saving them on another host via an up-line dump mechanism such as TFTP (see [OPER:2], [INTRO:3]).