3 ms·

This is very cool. I'm amazed at how expensive it is even built yourself. How much is the equivalent professional version?

secure 11y ago
Commercial serial terminal servers (used to?) go for about a thousand bucks. Bottom line, I think it’s (barely) cheaper to build one yourself, but only if all the research & development (read: ordering multiple prototypes) is already done, like it is now :).
- busterarm 11y ago
  You can buy used ones on ebay for $100 though. I picked one up for $90ish shipped a few years ago. Not with anywhere near this many connections though. I can hardly give the thing away now.
  - scurvy 11y ago
    I buy the Perles off of eBay for a few hundred dollars. Way cheaper than this, good software support, multiple gig PHY's, and often dual psus.
kenz0r 11y ago
You're probably looking around the $2 - $2.5K mark for a professional equivalent, but they're a fair bit more robust inside. Eg. https://www.opengearstore.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=CM7148-2-SAC-US https://www.opengearstore.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode... - PCIe UARTs rather than USB, 2 GbE ports, a bunch more software smarts, and support.
- mschuster91 11y ago
  > PCIe UARTs rather than USB, 2 GbE ports I wonder what that overkill in speed is for. With serial ports you don't need that much bandwidth (48 ports x 100 kBits = 4,8 MBit/s, yes I know it's 115200 but too drunk for math). You could even run that thing with a 10 MBit/s LAN interface. The only thing I understand is the PCIe stuff because USB latency can be problematic (especially on the Pi).
  - tw04 11y ago
    A lot of newer 10Gbe switches won't go to 100mbit. If you don't have gigE you aren't getting plugged in in a lot of datacenters nowadays.
    - mschuster91 11y ago
      Oh, thanks for the info. I thought all that stuff was backwards compatible...
      - scurvy 11y ago
        The Broadcom Trident 2/+ chipsets, that a lot of vendors use for their merchant silicon, only support 1, 10, and 40 gig PHY's. No more 10/100 on these switches (which are all over every datacenter).
    - jhallenworld 11y ago
      This reminds me that we used to use these network power switches: http://dataprobe.com/iboot.html http://dataprobe.com/iboot.html The problem with them is that they use just an 8051 microcontroller (talking to an ethernet controller over a parallel port)! Arp and other broadcast background traffic on modern networks overwhelms them.
  - kenz0r 11y ago
    As the poster below said, GbE is mandated by a lot of data centres. 2 ports is also pretty useful too - you can aggregate them if you're concerned about reliability, you can use the console server to segment out a management network etc.

secure 11y ago

Commercial serial terminal servers (used to?) go for about a thousand bucks. Bottom line, I think it’s (barely) cheaper to build one yourself, but only if all the research & development (read: ordering multiple prototypes) is already done, like it is now :).

busterarm 11y ago
You can buy used ones on ebay for $100 though. I picked one up for $90ish shipped a few years ago. Not with anywhere near this many connections though. I can hardly give the thing away now.
- scurvy 11y ago
  I buy the Perles off of eBay for a few hundred dollars. Way cheaper than this, good software support, multiple gig PHY's, and often dual psus.

kenz0r 11y ago

You're probably looking around the $2 - $2.5K mark for a professional equivalent, but they're a fair bit more robust inside. Eg. https://www.opengearstore.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=CM7148-2-SAC-US https://www.opengearstore.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode... - PCIe UARTs rather than USB, 2 GbE ports, a bunch more software smarts, and support.

mschuster91 11y ago
> PCIe UARTs rather than USB, 2 GbE ports I wonder what that overkill in speed is for. With serial ports you don't need that much bandwidth (48 ports x 100 kBits = 4,8 MBit/s, yes I know it's 115200 but too drunk for math). You could even run that thing with a 10 MBit/s LAN interface. The only thing I understand is the PCIe stuff because USB latency can be problematic (especially on the Pi).
- tw04 11y ago
  A lot of newer 10Gbe switches won't go to 100mbit. If you don't have gigE you aren't getting plugged in in a lot of datacenters nowadays.
  - mschuster91 11y ago
    Oh, thanks for the info. I thought all that stuff was backwards compatible...
    - scurvy 11y ago
      The Broadcom Trident 2/+ chipsets, that a lot of vendors use for their merchant silicon, only support 1, 10, and 40 gig PHY's. No more 10/100 on these switches (which are all over every datacenter).
  - jhallenworld 11y ago
    This reminds me that we used to use these network power switches: http://dataprobe.com/iboot.html http://dataprobe.com/iboot.html The problem with them is that they use just an 8051 microcontroller (talking to an ethernet controller over a parallel port)! Arp and other broadcast background traffic on modern networks overwhelms them.
- kenz0r 11y ago
  As the poster below said, GbE is mandated by a lot of data centres. 2 ports is also pretty useful too - you can aggregate them if you're concerned about reliability, you can use the console server to segment out a management network etc.