Routers for CO OOB management network

Barton F Bruce barton at gnaps.com
Fri Oct 29 08:21:44 UTC 2004



>> I need to select a router to install in each of our CO's to bring
together a
>> network of T-1 between our colos.

>Look to Ebay or similar for 2500's with dual V.35. Either find them with DC
>supplies or buy DC supplies as spares. The DC version has only one inlet,
but
>it is trivial to bridge an A/B supply with a diode bridge. We do so with
our
>boxes. Depending on availability of DC supplies this could be very
>cost-effective.

The 2600's DC supplies are an exact mechanical fit and have a slightly
heftier power rating and may be easier to find.

They sometimes appear on EBAY as either 2500 or as 2600 supplies at $20 or
less each.

If you get stuck, the supply manufacturer sold us 20 of them at $65 each a
few years ago. You may have to be persistant, and promise to never tease
ci$co about it.

Remember to load all 2500s with 16 meg DRAM and 8 meg of flash (or more). If
you have a lot of 4 meg flash sticks, use 2 in 1/2 your routers (and say:
PARTITION FLASH 1 8 - rather than 2 4 4), and new 8 megs in the rest.The
DRAM is about $10 on ebay, and the FLASH is maybe $20. Try hard for Intel
flash chips (or Sharp clones that ID themselves as "Intel") so you won't
need to chase newer boot PLCCs if you get routers with old boot code than
can't do AMD flash.

Load them with unix compressed .Z images or see if you can find one of the
kits that used to be around on the net to convert cisco run from FLASH
images into more normal for cisco -mz gzipped types buried in a self
extracting wrapper so your 25xx routers will behave like most other cisco
routers. Find details in old C.D.S.C news archives.

You can then load newer images onto a RUNNING router without the 2500 class
B/S involving Flash-Load-Helper and remote disasters when flash is erased
and tftp fails.








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