28 Nov
2005
28 Nov
'05
6:44 a.m.
"Jay West" wrote:
The defacto standard for terminal servers for decades
in the carrier class
(and below) was the Livingston Portmaster series. We used to have racks and
racks of PM2E's with a mix of isdn and pots cards.
beg to differ. The portmaster was not (by any means) carrier class.
It was popular among those who where not colocated and/or didn't have much
money.
The ascend max & tnt where the carrier class defacto standard (ask uunet).
one trip to mae-east around 1998 would confirm that... you'd see rows
and rows and rows of them (along with large copper pipes carrying +48v)
having said that, the PM would be a good choice for someone who wanted
a cheap terminal server.
but if you wanted a high quality small terminal server I think you'd be
better off with a xylogics annex. The PM is easier to configure but the
annex will last longer. Both are based on low end x86 cpu's but the
xylogic's hardware and QA was much better than livingston's.
-brad