Question
What is the default character encoding used by most Cisco devices when communicating over the console?
Background
I'm a software developer, writing an application that interfaces with several cisco devices via their console ports (basically, it runs IOS configuration commands and responds to certain feedback--like errors).
My software runs under mac/windows/linux and each OS has it's own default character encoding systems. So I have to be very careful when I send bytes to the console and when I receive bytes from the console. If I don't specify the right character encoding, things break in whacky ways. Like when I "press return" after sending a command, on certain systems, it will "press return" twice, instead of once! Or, when I receive data and try to make sense of it, the program will get confused by the incorrect byte/character conversion.
Summary
If I power on a new (or freshly reset) Cisco 3845 or 2955 and connect via the console and send data/bytes/characters back and forth...
...what encoding will the device use, by default. My suspicion is that it's UTF-8.