Adding terminal server features to RouterOS?

RouterOS General
1

I am in the process of ripping out every single bit of Cisco gear in any network I can reach. Routers, switches, and VoIP gear is no problem, but I’m still puzzling over terminal servers. We’ve got many Cisco 2509/2511 out there, devices that provide eight or sixteen ports of RS-232 lines for controlling the consoles of other devices.

What I’d really like to find is a 1U rackmount (Soekris 4801 in custom case?) that could have an RS-232 card added to it - a four, eight, and sixteen ports would be lovely.

Is anyone aware of hardware that fits this description being made now? How hard would it be to add a TCP to RS-232 gateway package to RouterOS? We’d want to be able to telnet to routerOS IP port 2000+ hardware port index just as the Cisco boxes permit now and it would be really fancy if we could get something like Minicom embedded …

2

I am in the process of ripping out every single bit of Cisco gear in any network I can reach.

I have to support that :wink: …

There’s a feature called “special-login” in RouterOS for a long time.
There you can configure that a login for username “x” should be directly connected to serial port “y”.

Try that - it should fit your needs, I think.


Best regards,
Christian Meis

3

/system serial-terminal lets you connect to a port minicom style.

If you need lots of ports, I’d suggest a used livingston/lucent pm2.