# Cisco IXM LoRa
# Background
The Cisco IXM gateway is a LoRaWAN Gateway. It listens for LoRa radio traffic and forwards it to a LoRa Server.
There are two ways to send LoRa Data to IoT Open. One is the UDP packet forwarder and another is the Common Packet Forwarder (CPF). The latter is recommended and is the only alternative on newer IXM firmwares.
In order to use the recommended CPF you need to have firmware version 2.1.0 or later on you IXM.