Re: Maintenance modems and power failures
Most network providers are aware of the secret hiding in most of our POPs. Those little sporters and courier modems stuffed into a rack somewhere plugged into the nearest available outlet, as the only out-of-band access. Has anyone come up with a solution for powering these forgotten pieces of equipment, which doesn't cost more than the modem itself?
At first you might think it makes sense to power them off the UPS which is powering the rest of your equipment. The only problem is if you are using the maintenance modem to monitor your UPS. This is just one of those things which has bugged me for a few years, but I still haven't come up with a solution I really like.
Get two modems. POTS ---- Modem 0 ---- Modem 1 | | UPS AC Utility AC This only really makes sense if you have your terminal server w/ redundant power, one utility AC and the other UPS AC. Austin
At 06:38 PM 2/10/99 -0800, Austin Schutz wrote:
Get two modems.
POTS ---- Modem 0 ---- Modem 1 | | UPS AC Utility AC
This only really makes sense if you have your terminal server w/ redundant power, one utility AC and the other UPS AC.
Actually, this will work better with two POTS lines, and two terminal servers. I like two different types of terminal servers - a 25/26xx (the 26xx with 32 async ports is kewlio), and something like a Sentry remote reboot device with async ports. Be sure one modem/terminal server combo is plugged into the utility power and the other modem/terminal server combo is plugged into the UPS. (You'd feel dumb if the terminal server was plugged into the wall and the modem into the UPS. :) The obvious problem here is that it is much more expensive than the normal OOB setup. But if you are going to have remote reboot equipment anyway, getting a Sentry with the terminal server isn't that much more expensive than the one without. This also gets you around stupid problems like IOS bugs. Now you just have to figure out which devices' console ports to plug into which terminal server. :p
Austin
TTFN, patrick I Am Not An Isp www.ianai.net ISPF, The Forum for ISPs by ISPs, <http://www.ispf.com> "Think of it as evolution in action." - Niven & Pournelle
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