Hi all,

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to upgrade my lab. Point is that I had not enough console ports to out of band manage all my devices. So I had to expand my console server. As the 2511 router has only up to 16 console wires, and all of them were in use, I needed to reach at least 32 devices.

In order to get this huge amount of console ports, my first thought was to buy a NM-32A. This module allows up to 32 console ports by using 4 Async Octal cables. But it needs to be the special ones, the async cable that looks like a whip. But what if I need to reach more devices on the future? Then I will need another router plus another NM-32A. And the NM-32A is expensive, very expensive.

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So finally I decided to change the vendor for this purpose. There are many options in eBay. Considering the price, I choose the Avocent ACS48. This is a very nice device. It allows you to control up to 48 devices by console, and you can stack it as well, so we increase the port density. It also allows you to use your own hand-made cables, so we can forget the nightmare of the octal one.

It’s a linux box with a 48MHz CPU, so the power consumption gets very low. It also allows you to enable many protocols, security and authentication options. Telnet, SSH, HTTP, HTTPS, VPN, Radius, Tacacs+, LDAP, NIS and a lot more. Since the web interface is very simple it allows the entire management of the device, more than enough for its purpose. And a few awesome things such like it allows independent authentication for each port, or multiple connections to the same console port, or even make something like a “SPAN” so we can see the console from another user connected to the same port. I highly recommend this device.

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A quick search on the net can get you a lot of links with documentation, like this one. By the way, the bid winner was me for a total of 63$ plus 21$ of shipping. Not too bad.

See you…

P.D. Now I’m selling my Cisco 2511 + 2 Octal Async Cables + AUI transceiver. If you are interested on it please use the contact form.