Console Servers

Wed Sep 11 22:31:04 UTC 2002

Hi

Try looking at this company's line of products:

http://www.itouchcom.com/

they used to be Xyplex.

Arie

On Tue, 10 Sep 2002, Charles Sprickman wrote:

> 
> Hello all,
> 
> Here's what I've found out.  It's a mix.  If any one solution looks to
> be the "winner" it's the roll-your-own solution.  This is what I'm going
> for since it's relatively cheap for low-density installs.  The only
> problem I'm finding is that it's tough to get a 1U box that has 2 PCI
> slots open.  2U seems overkill.  Since Compact Flash adapters are cheap
> (about $20) and the cards themselves can be had for $59 (128MB), I'm going
> to go diskless.  I'll probably use conserver, but I'll be giving rtty a
> try as well.
> 
> If anyone has pointers to cheap 1U or 2U's, I'm all ears.  Just need a
> minimal box, don't need much CPU for this.
> 
> With about 13 replies, I can report the following:
> 
> > Lantronix - http://www.lantronix.com/products/cs/scs820_scs1620/index.html
> 
> 1 vote for, one against.  The complaint was that the Lantronix has a very
> bad management interface.
> 
> I also noted that BBC is using a mess of these at Telehouse...
> 
> > Cyclades - http://www.cyclades.com/products/ts_series.php
> 
> 4 for.
> 
> "Under the covers, it's your average linux box with ttys0-ttys31.  The
> portslave software is pretty nice, too.  Offline data buffering and the
> ability to stick a hostname relationship with a serial port.  [Ex:  ssh2
> bob:myserver at cyclades to connect to server myserver ]"
> 
> Another poster is using the cyclades and the digi, and if I'm reading him
> right, uses the Cyclades 48 port for smaller installations and the digi on
> larger.
> 
> > Digi - http://www.digi.com/solutions/devtermsrv/cm/index.shtml
> > Looks to run about $1800 for 16 ports
> 
> 1 for (kind of).  The poster has a large installed base and it mostly
> works and has a very high density.  Apparently it's a two-piece system
> where a cable fans out to boxes that further split it.  But if one of the
> splitters locks up, everything dasiy-chained through it locks up.  This
> person is now using Cyclades (please correct me if I'm wrong on this one).
> 
> Equinox - 2 folks using these (cards).
> 
> "We use the Equinox SST-128P (theoretically expandable to 128 ports,
> comes in 16-port chunks) on Linux. Their linux drivers work well [...]
> It's aPCI card with a cable to an external plugboard with the 16 RJ-45s."
> 
> "I have had a bit of experience with Equinox (http://www.equinox.com/)
> gear and can recommend them. Their serial hubs will talk serial to almost
> anything out there and when plugged into cat5, tunnel those serial ports
> back to physical mappings on a host system.  [...] Geared more towards
> industrial applications (what I'm using them for) but I have often
> considered slapping one in our telecomm rack to map serial ports
> on my local box to our various gear."
> 
> Cisco -
> 
> 2 suggestions to use a 2511 or a 3620 with 16 port async cards.  The 2511
> would probably be a bit too slow if you enable ssh though...
> 
> Livingston -
> 
> 2 for an old portmaster behind an ssh-able box (if you have the space)
> 
> Arula Systems (www.arula.com)-
> 
> 1 vote for this, apparently a new company.
> 
> Build your own -
> 
> 5 for this solution.  Everyone is using FreeBSD, and the RocketPort cards
> seem to work better than the Cyclades cards under FreeBSD.  3 people are
> using conserver (www.conserver.com) to make it easier to manage.  Paul
> Vixie shared the following (he gave permission to quote in full):
> 
> "We use RocketPort, FreeBSD, IronSystems, and ISC rtty.
> 
>         http://www.rocketport.com/products/specs/rack16_foto.asp
>         http://www.rocketport.com/products/specs/specs.asp?product=rp_pci
> 
>         http://www.freebsd.org/
>         http://www.ironsystems.com/
> 
>         ftp://ftp.vix.com/pub/vixie/rtty-4.0.shar.gz
> 
> This puts a BSD box in every POP, which is very useful for many reasons."
> 
> So there you are...  Thanks for all the responses.
> 
> Charles
> 