Re: Opengear alternatives that support 5g?

[Saku Ytti <saku () ytti fi>]

On Fri, 26 Apr 2024 at 19:43, Warren Kumari <warren () kumari net> wrote:

> I've been on the same quest, and I have some additional requests / features. Ideally it:
>
> 1: would be small - my particular use-case is for a "traveling rack", and so 0U is preferred.
> 2: would be fairly cheap.
> 3: would not be a Raspberry-Pi, a USB hub and USB-to-serial cables. We tried that for a while, and it was clunky — 
> the SD card died a few times (and jumped out entirely once!), people kept futzing with the OS and fighting over which 
> console software to use, installing other packages, etc.
> 4: support modern SSH clients (it seems like you shouldn't have to say this, but… )
> 5: actually be designed as a termserver - the current thing we are using doesn't really understand terminals, and so 
> we need to use 'socat -,raw,echo=0,escape=0x1d TCP:<termserver>:<port>' to get things like tab-completion and 
> "up-arrow for last command" to work.
> 6: support logging of serial (e.g crash-messages) to some sort of log / buffer / similar (it's useful to be able to 
> see what a device barfed all over the console when it crashes.

Decouple your needs, use whatever hardware to translate RS232 into
SSH, and then use 'conserver' to maintain 24/7 logging and
multiplexing SSH sessions to each console port. Then you have your
logs in your existing NMS box filesystem, and consistent UX
independent of hardware to reach, monitor and multiplex consoles.
For me Cisco is great here, because it's something an organisation
already knows how to source, turn-up, upgrade, troubleshoot, maintain.
And you get a broad set of features you might want, IPSEC, DMVPN, BGP,
ISIS, and so forth.

I keep wondering why everyone is so focused on OOB hardware cost, when
in my experience the ethernet connection is ~200-300USD (150USD can be
just xconn) MRC. So in 10 years, you'll pay 24k to 36k just for the
OOB WAN, masking the hardware price. And 10years, to me, doesn't sound
even particularly long a time for a console setup.






> The Get Console Airconsole TS series meets many of these requirements, but it doesn't do #6. It also doesn't really 
> feel like they have been updating / maintaining these.
>
> Yes, I fully acknowledge that #3 falls into the "Doctor, Doctor, it hurts when I do this" camp, but, well…
>
> W
>
>
> > --
> > ++ytti


--
  ++ytti