Say ... we have a pop for a big ISP (i work for one, using MAX4K and
TC, PM3 is just for my hobby things)
which most of the time consists of a cisco with a leased
line, an ethernet (mostly switched 10/100) and then a handful
of portmasters/max4k/tnt (think of 240-1500+ ports per location and
around 150 locations). Say we only
have one brand of dialin equipment which is best for configuration.
How would you configure dialin/out locations with a portmaster which
gets a whole network routed ?
With ascend i do a normal dialin profile and let the ascend speak
rip v2 to my cisco. What i get now is a route propagation for my network
to the correct Ascend, and through this to my customer.
Dialout is a bit more tricky. We do a static route to the last/first
Ascend which has a remote configured DialOut location (e.g. route).
Now if we have a packet to this location, the ascend get the packet
finds the route, and asks via Radius for this location profile - After
the ascend gets this, it dials out.
This is just how it works right now. If i add a location for Dial in
AND out i just provide a radius profile which i can store in a database
with a frontend for my project coordinator. The DB Backend
just tells the ascend to recheck remote Routes.
How would you do this on a PM3 ? DialIn profiles via Radius .. ok ...
same as above. DialOut ? Generate a local profile. Now imagine locations
like that above ? There will be >100 Dialout locations on that POP
so how will you administrate the local profiles for that ?
Another thing ... We often have the problem - we find a parameter
which changes behaviour for something of our pops. So we would like
to check/change all chassis to this specific configuration without
changing the other config opts. What i can now do with ascend ... Build some
ascii config/script which i put there via SNMP/TFTP and my config
is changed. I do a run on 500 chassis in 30 minutes. How would you
do this with the PM3s ? I will use expect and some shell script to
set and/or retrieve config items, this takes me a long telnet connection
authentication in clear text with interaction, and always the possibility
of an misconfigured prompt or something which doesnt match my expect
strings.
I think this gives you the point where the problem is with networks
greater 1 location with 1 PM[34].
Buy yourself an Ascend and play around with those nice radius remote
configuration options for DialOUT locations which is really handy.
Also have a look at the possibility to get/put the configuration
like an ASCII file. I have written myself a native perl tftp module
and there is a good Perl snmp package (Native perl -> mrtg) which
gives my everything i need.
BTW: I dont like the Ascend "Ncurses" based frontend, but i got the mif
mode to play on command line.
USR is a pain with DialIn/Out but the features like Temperature
get more importent with this size as sometimes the air conditions
fails at some locations and then we see this in the temperature,
USR thought on big networks and tried to implement but ascend
completed this.
Flo
-- Florian Lohoff flo@mini.gt.owl.de +49-5241-470566 - To unsubscribe, email 'majordomo@livingston.com' with 'unsubscribe portmaster-users' in the body of the message. Searchable list archive: <URL:http://www.livingston.com/Tech/archive/>