A year ago I wanted to consolidate all our headless Sparcs and throw in some authentication. We had been using multiple switch boxes for the Sun boxes which was a royal pain. But I didn't want to spend alot.
The best bang-per-buck (i.e. cheapest solution) is Digi's Portserver II.
http://www.digi.com/digi.cfm?p=805917.pi.prd.00000015
It can be configured for as few as 8 ports or as many as 64. It's very expandable too, and does authentication so we could hang modems off it too (i.e. radius, tacacs).
There's a difference between terminal servers and port servers, generally meaning if it has authentication or not.
Next in the price line was Xyplex, but last place I worked with one of those I found the OS to be quite cryptic.
Of course if you're looking for DIRT CHEAP, you could grab a PC and put in a multi-port board like :
http://www.digi.com/digi.cfm?p=805917.pi.pline.content.0002
One really neat thing about the Portserver II is it comes with software called RealPort which allows you to configure the ports of the portserver to seem like local ports on a machine. For example, I have paging software that thinks one modem on the portserver is locally attached to the server the s/w is running on.
My $0.02 anyway....
On Mon, 28 Aug 2000, Sam Schorr wrote:
Does anyone have a recommendation for a console connection server? We have 14 filers and growing and I'm looking for some centralized, easy serial connection box. I have used Annex in the past for UNIX, but thought maybe some folks out there in toasterland might have some ideas to share. Thanks in advance for any advice!
Sam Schorr Homestead.com ph: (650) 549-3152 fax: (650) 364-7329 sschorr@homestead-inc.com http://www.homestead.com
Homestead: It's a new world. Make your place.
----------- Jay Orr Systems Administrator Fujitsu Nexion Inc. St. Louis, MO