At 2 Sep 12:28 CDT, Jeff Wabik wrote:

I've been poking around (thru the Black Box catalog, for example) for equipment to help us support our remote network gear located near the NSS to which we attach. I've had little success at finding the right pieces. I'm wondering if any of you have implemented any of these (listed below) solutions, and if so, where you found the equipment to do it; then subsequent sucess/failure information.

Not in any particular order, here are the functions I'd like to be able to perform remotely.. This is a "grandiose wish list", as it were.

* Software switchable dial-up access to serial ports on all gear (several ports): To Device 1 +-------------> |+------------> || To Device 2 Phone line +-------+ +---------+++ . -----------------| Modem |---| Magic Box | . +-------+ +-----------+ . || To Device (n-1) |+------------> +-------------> To Device (n)

In this scenario, I dial into the modem to the "magic box", and give it some character code or sequence to attach me to the specified port. I can escape back to the magic-box and request subsequent connections without having to redial. [Black box has one of these for 4 ports, but I hear its not too good. Any experiences?]

CICnet did just this. There was a 4 port I thought black box code controled switch. There was one port to the cisco router and one to each of the csu ports. The switch had like and esc, ctlz, n where n was 1 - 4 saying switch to port 1-4. Otherwise it was transparent. ------------------------- Ed Krol 217-333-7886 University of Illinois 1304 W. Springfield Urbana, IL 61801 Maturity is a measure of ones ability to deal with Ambiguity