Perle Systems Technical Note

In-Band Management

In today's age of dependency on computers most companies cannot afford downtime on their critical systems. They therefore must provide administrators every possible tool to ensure systems are maintained and stay running. One such tool is the Console Server which allows 'backdoor' access into many of today's systems.

The most basic use for the Console Server is to provide in-band access to the console ports on various devices such as routers, servers, RAS etc.

In-band means the Console Server can be accessed from the LAN and even the corporate WAN and therefore all data crosses via the network. This would mean an administrator from anywhere on the corporate network could telnet (or for security SSH) to the Console Server and gain access to the attached devices and administer them.

An issue with this solution is that if the network fails the Console Server and attached devices become inaccessible.