Re: What are folks using for serial consoles these days?

[Josh Reynolds via NANOG <nanog () lists nanog org>]

I have been known to do this as well. Works quite good, and supports
wireguard and zerotier out of the box.

On Mon, Dec 22, 2025, 6:58 PM Levon Bragg via NANOG <nanog () lists nanog org>
wrote:

> I may get laughed outta here, but I use Mikrotik routers that have a USB
> port. Then hang a USB HUB off that with as many USB to serial consoles as
> needed.
> Setup strong firewalling on the unit, and VPN to it.
> Then I have all the Serial consoles I need.
>
> And they are inexpensive
>
>
> Thank You,
>
>
> Levon Bragg
>
> Shift Computer Services
>
> Phone 714.369.8197 x1101
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> ________________________________
> From: Dan Mahoney via NANOG <nanog () lists nanog org>
> Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2025 4:51 PM
> To: nanog () lists nanog org <nanog () lists nanog org>
> Cc: Dan Mahoney <danm () prime gushi org>
> Subject: What are folks using for serial consoles these days?
>
> Hey there folks.
>
> Dayjob has historically used USB TTY pods attached to real BSD machines to
> talk to our cisco consoles, with the amazing benefit that with a program
> like Vixie's rtty (or conserver) you can also capture the output of those
> consoles in real-time, and perhaps use that data to identify a connected
> device.
>
> As a bonus, because the rackmount devices have real DE-9's on them, it
> means they work with any kind of cable you get (not just your standard rj45
> cisco rollover like you might get with a Cyclades thing -- and you don't
> have to come up with the weird-ass mappings for rj45-serial like you might
> need like our ME4012 NAS (the serial cable is a stereo plug), our smart
> power strips (it's either a stereo plug, or an rj12), or something like an
> older brocade switch (it's a DE9, but it's friggin ODD, and I think it may
> also be the wrong gender).
>
> It also means, since you're running a real OS, you have patches as long as
> the OS is supported (so you're not stuck with "gee it only speaks
> rsa1024"), versus some EOL appliance.  But it's also 2u, and since we're
> recently buying a lot of Dell hardware, that's Super Overkill for a dell,
> so I'm evaluating maybe just going "Appliance".
>
> If we stick with an existing unix box for this, I'd want something with
> proper IPMI/OOB (so Rpi is out) but maybe the dumbest, shallowest-depth
> atom64 supermicro you can find, in the event you need to do a reinstall or
> catch a hung system.
>
> Are there things that other folks are using that are "easy" to work with
> that you've found to have Long firmware lives, decent warranties and low
> hassle?  Does anything these days actually have DE9s on it?
>
> -Dan
>
> (You may have also seen my note earlier about the Cisco ASR920, which has
> RS232 pins in a USB-A header.  No, not via a PL2032 chip inside the host
> that provides a virtual serial...direct txd/rxd/gnd/cts etc, on the USB
> pins.  I've seen things you people would't believe)
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