On Wednesday, Feb 11, 2004, at 12:01 US/Pacific, Diego Sierra wrote:

>
> I search for a box that could do that (serial lines + LAN), but cannot
> find anything. Do you know if such a device could be out there ?
>
cisco still sells async boards for their low-end routers (26xx, 36xx),
so
you can put together such a "terminal server";  there are of course
cheaper
vendors, although a lot of the original providers (like livingston) got
sucked into the "digital modem" craze instead.  What remains of these
are now aimed at being "console servers" for things like linux clusters.
One vendor other than cisco that seems to have their share of clues is
"Cyclades" (at http://www.cyclades.com )  (they may even still sell the
2511rj fixed configuration terminal server, although it recently had its
end of life announced.  Long lived product, that one...)   there are
some reasonably priced cisco-500s and 2511s on ebay...

You can make such a box without the network, at which point in time it
becomes known as dataswitch or an async statistical multiplexor.   these
had their hayday before network based terminal servers, and weren't any
cheaper (but they tended to be designed to scale to very large sizes,
while the network based servers were distributed and incrementally
expandable.)

I don't think I've seen such devices based on analog switches.  But
I don't see any reason it couldn't work.  Some of the printer sharing
devices available for PCs might do the job...

Bill W
(cisco)

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