On Nov 12, 14:42, John Lawson wrote:
>
> Since I'm (mostly to very dumb) when it comes to these things - I would
> like to ask for opinions/advice/recommendations from the List on what the
> best way would be to attach one of the terminal ports on the machine to
> the Net, to allow folks to telnet in and play with the system remotely.
>
> I was thinking phone-line -> modem-> Net-to-serial-box-> 11/44 port.
Do you have some sort of "always-on" connection from the your local network
to the Internet? Or do you use dialup?
The easiest way is to use a terminal server box:
net -> terminal server -> 11/44 port
A suitable terminal server might be smething like a Shivaport (recent hence
moderately expensive), an old Emulex Performance 4000 or Performance 2000
(if you can find a cheap one that's not died), a Racal Interlan, a Xylogics
Annex, or any of several other possible brands that you might pick up
secondhand. Not Windows Terminal Services or the LTSP (Linux Terminal
Server Project), though -- they're for thin clients for Windows/Unix.
DEC used to make a suitable box themselves.
Although they're called "terminal servers", most -- including all the ones
I've mentioned -- can be configured so you telnet in to them and make a
serial connection out to one of the serial ports, which looks to the
machine it's connected to as if a serial terminal has connected to it. On
many of them, the serial port you connect to can be automatically chosen
according to the port number you use in the telnet command (eg telnet
tsrv01 3003 might be used to establish a connection to whatever's on serial
port 3 of tsrv01).
We use several of them to get remote access to the console serial lines of
key switches and routers across campus, and I have a couple at home which
allow my Unix machine to connect to the serial ports on various machines,
including a couple of PDP-11s.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
Received on Tue Nov 12 2002 - 16:56:00 GMT