Cisco makes a 16 port Async card for ISR routers, they even bundle it with a 2811 router for fairly inexpensive $$$... Cisco2811-16TS is the partnum I think You can scale up very high or down very low for your console needs with cisco routers, and inexpensive used or obsolete routers are available for not much money. The octal cables are available with rj45's already on them, which is nice.... Email if you want a sample term server config for a 2800 router. If Cisco is not what you want... Consult the Zonker's Greater Scroll of Console Knowledge: http://www.conserver.com/consoles/ ... You may find what you are looking for there.
-----Original Message----- From: Tomas L. Byrnes [mailto:tomb@byrneit.net] Sent: Thursday, May 14, 2009 10:00 PM To: Mehmet Akcin; nanog@nanog.org Subject: RE: Managing your network devices via console
I've found Avocents to be a nightmare, and the company to be horrible to deal with.
They work fine as a local console switch, but they are absurdly expensive for that use. The rest of their features are byzantine in implementation and usage, and their support and licensing policies exorbitant.
Old school terminal servers and IPMI/DRAC cards work very well.
-----Original Message----- From: Mehmet Akcin [mailto:mehmet@akcin.net] Sent: Thursday, May 14, 2009 7:30 PM To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Managing your network devices via console
Hello,
It's always cool to have console access to routers/switches and nowadays they are going from RS-232 to RJ-45 as a standart. I have got Avocent DSR 2035 which is a KVM+Serial console (all in one).. but while I was able to have it work against servers via KVM or/and Serial , I was unable to make it work properly against any network device. I am wondering if anyone had experience on DSR or similar boxes to configure them against network devices console ports.
Making suggestions for alternative ways of centralizing network device console management is also more than welcome, I guess the old fashioned server attached usb-serial console is one of the most preferred way, but feel free to provide if you have good ideas
cheers
-- Mehmet