From a Cisco perspective when we built the first 8000 (Silicon One) routers, the original 8201/8202 had a separate Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) the same as a server because we thought people would truly enjoy having that. In turns out no one used it and more were confused by it. It added extra cost and took up real estate that could be used for other things, so it didn’t continue.
Thanks, Phil From: Saku Ytti via NANOG <[email protected]> Date: Tuesday, December 23, 2025 at 12:50 PM To: North American Network Operators Group <[email protected]> Cc: Saku Ytti <[email protected]> Subject: Re: What are folks using for serial consoles these days? Could we just start asking vendors to implement actual out-of-band port. Like Cisco CMP. The rs232 port we use, is on-band, if the NOS panics or otherwise is broken or busy, the rs232 port won't work either. On some routers you used to be able to have hardware break stop executing NOS and execute shell on rs232, which would allow you to reset the device via rs-232, even if NOS is not running, but this is actually going away and was rarely used by operators. But actual ethernet port on different SOC decoupled from control-plane would remove need for these RS232 consoles and would get us peak 2005 technology for networking gear. I think we're ready for 2005. On Tue, 23 Dec 2025 at 20:43, Doug McIntyre via NANOG <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Mon, Dec 22, 2025 at 05:25:22PM -0800, Dan Mahoney via NANOG wrote: > > Nobody's jumped up and said "This ioGear/Cyclades/Avocent thing rocks, and > > it'll have firmware for the next 10 years, for sure". My network hardware > > reseller hasn't gotten back to me (but it is Christmas week), > > > Because nothing rocks. They all have the problems you list. > > One-off embedded system the manufactorer developed once with zero product > cycle in thought. > Puts out for some number of years until they no longer feel like supporting > it. > And then goes end-of-life with no upgrade options. > > I feel like OpenGear (owned by Digi now) tends to be the most future > proof at this point in time (which will probably change in the future) if you > are looking for an embedded box, > But I've done solutions like you list too, and been happy with conserver and > a basic PC. > _______________________________________________ > NANOG mailing list > https://lists.nanog.org/archives/list/[email protected]/message/SR3PVDZNOOF6HUYGFX5NXWTHPUZ44WTQ/ -- ++ytti _______________________________________________ NANOG mailing list https://lists.nanog.org/archives/list/[email protected]/message/MRY54DUN2FH6NCJPE2KMAZ3F3GIJ5YXF/ _______________________________________________ NANOG mailing list https://lists.nanog.org/archives/list/[email protected]/message/5X2ZPOUPSMKNAVNJRQLLBQVNNVYBHLJL/
