In February we looked at a network power switch and were very impressed. This week we’ve got our hands on a similar device that not only controls power but also can switch its serial interface or telnet interface to one of six serial ports and be used to monitor a set of on/off switches such as door detectors.
This device is the FastNet Remote Monitor and Control Unit (RMCU) from E-COMMS, which comes in a sexy lime green, low-profile enclosure sporting a power-on indicator on the front and all sorts of connectors on the back: a 9-pin D-type RS232 console port; an RJ-45 10 Base-T, RJ-11 modem port with internal modem (with LEDs to show transmit and receive status); six RJ-45 ports for serial switching, eight pairs of connectors for switches (with LEDs for status); four 13-amp power sockets; two power cords for each pair of power sockets; and a power cord for the main unit. Whew.
We would prefer to have the LEDs on the front of the unit because once it’s plugged in, all the cables will be at the back, and we can’t get the full benefit of the light show in our server room.
The FastNet RMCU supports local (command line over a serial connection) or remote (telnet or Web interface over Ethernet or command line over a dial-up connection) access.
To configure the unit, connect via the serial port to use the command-line interface. We did this quite easily, but as we went through the setup of the FastNet’s operating system, something called MicroRTOS from Xecom, kept interrupting with, “Cannot find [media access control] address of gateway,” until we gave it the correct IP address of the gateway. That was really annoying, and why it should care is a mystery.
We also wished that the device supported static and dynamic IP addressing so it could use Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol on first boot up, and then if you wanted to, you could set a static address by telnetting or browsing in across your network. This struck us as a good idea because it took us forever to find our all-purpose serial cable.
The manual is poor and even has some incorrect instructions. For example, it says that when you are creating user accounts with the command-line utility and you are asked for the “user operate level” you should specify a value of “1” for the admin level, “2” for operator level and “3” for user level. When you create users, the software offers you a default level of “5” and if you enter “1” it tells you that is not allowed and that the available range is “2” through “15”!
The company’s Web site is no help – the site is pretty bad with 404s returned when we requested the FAQ and product documentation pages.
Anyway, the FastNet RMCU includes a Web server, telnet server and FTP server (the manual ignores that last service, even although the configuration process explicitly offers the option of switching it on). It also supports SNMP and has configurable traps so it can be integrated with network management systems.
Once configured and the Web and telnet services enabled, you can use either to examine the status of the power sockets and switches, to switch power sockets on or off, and to select which serial ports are connected to the main serial port.
The latter lets you use the FastNet as a terminal server sending the console port data to any of six serial outputs. This is useful for devices such as routers that can be configured via their serial interface, but the FastNet’s lack of Secure Sockets Layer support or any other type of encryption over IP makes it an incomplete solution.
The Web interface is OK but not particularly elegant. Device control and status reporting are available, and as an administrator you can set the name of the FastNet unit along with the names of serial ports, power sockets and contact switches and set passwords for each user level: admin, operator and read only.
For all its faults, the FastNet RMCU is a useful device, albeit with a few bad design decisions and some egregious documentation faults. But at a list price of $1,245 the FastNet Remote Monitor and Control Unit is overpriced. The company says future versions will have major changes.
Switch on at gearhead@gibbs.com.
