Notes on Digiboard Terminal Servers TS/8 TS/16

A customer who still uses old terminals and DOS PC's wanted to move away from a Frame Relay setup where two remote offices connect through Digi C/Con serial boxes. They put in Verizon Business DSL at each office, and we also installed Multitech VPN Routeers at each location, and Digi Terminal Servers. Digi has made terminal servers for some time, but the old product looked like the C/Cons while these are smaller and look more like a switch. The review of the older portserver still applies with some small differences.

You connect to these serially at 9600 baud (default is root with password dbps) on any port to login and set the config:

set config ip=192.168.2.10
set config dhcp=off
set config gateway=192.168.2.1
 

As dhcp is on by default, you could also just telnet to the box.

Each box will need the gateway set to its router. So, if we have a three office vpn, we might have 192.168.1.0 as the main office network, 192.168.2.0 as one branch, and 192.168.3.0 as the other (see the Multitech review for specifics on setting up the VPN's). The TS at the first branch would be 192.168.2.10 and its gateway might be 192.168.2.1.

In addition, the Unix box needs routing - it needs routes for 192.168.2.0 and 192.168.3.0. Those would point at its router: 192.168.1.1 in this case. If it already has a default route pointing to the router, you of course don't need these. If you don't understand routing, see Routing Basics.

We installed the Digi "RealPort" software and then used "drpadmin" to assign tty devices to specific ip addresses. This then lets you use port 3 on the 192.168.2.10 device as (for example) /dev/ttyg03. You can use stty and "ditty" commands, add ttyg03 to inittab, etc. - it just assigns fake tty ports to the device so that it can all be transparent to your software. We made the assignments match the existing serial setups, so terminals and printers just automatically worked without reconfiguring software.

One thing I noticed is that if the TS is reset, it takes a LONG time before logins work again. I thought things weren't working because I had no logins even after the devices responded to pings. A minute or so later everything was fine, so just have patience.

These provide a simple way to transition old systems to a network. The cost of the terminal servers is less than replacing the old equipment with PC's. As old terminals and DOS machines are replaced with new pc's, the customer can leave them connected serially or connect them with TCP/IP.

Comments?

More Articles by Tony Lawrence - Find me on Google+

Jump to Comments

Many of the products and books I review are things I purchased for my own use. Some were given to me specifically for the purpose of reviewing them. I resell or can earn commissions from the sale of some of these items. Links within these pages may be affiliate links that pay me for referring you to them. That's mostly insignificant amounts of money; whenever it is not I have made my relationship plain. I also may own stock in companies mentioned here. If you have any question, please do feel free to contact me.

Specific links that take you to pages that allow you to purchase the item I reviewed are very likely to pay me a commission. Many of the books I review were given to me by the publishers specifically for the purpose of writing a review. These gifts and referral fees do not affect my opinions; I often give bad reviews anyway.

We use Google third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our website. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, click here.