Managing your network devices via console

Fri May 15 02:59:45 UTC 2009

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 at akcin.net]
>Sent: Thursday, May 14, 2009 7:30 PM
>To: nanog at 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