Cisco 2509 - Software?

[Phillip Pacier]

Thank you for your time.  I recently acquired a 2509 router that I plan to use as a serial device router.  My question is, how do you create the virtual com ports on Windows and Linux machines to point to the TCP address:ports in the 2509 router?  Is there software or drivers that do this?  Or something third-party?  Thanks in advance for any advice.

Phil

[Richard Burts]

Phil

There are some parts of your question that are not clear to me and I hope that you can clarify them.

- when you say that you want to use the 2509 as "a serial device router" are you talking about using its async ports to connect to console type connection on other devices or is something else intended?

- are the Windows and Linux machines that you mention devices that will access the 2509 to control other devices or are these the devices to be connected from the 2509 and controlled from the 2509?

In my experience the 2509 is frequently used as a terminal server to connect to async, character oriented, console connections of other devices. You connect to the 2509 (frequently via telnet but other access methods are possible) and on the 2509 you have configured reverse telnet so that the user may connect to the console port of other devices that are connected to the async ports of the 2509. These other devices are frequently routers and switches. I have heard of connecting to the console of Unix servers and guess that Linus might also be possible. I do not see how connecting to Windows machines this way would work.

HTH

Rick

[Phillip Pacier]

Not quite.  I have devices that connect to the serial ports of computers.  Devices such as terminal node controllers, weather stations, UPS control lines, power switches, etc.  I would like to make these devices available to any computer on the network, but the software that is used to communicate with those devices is looking for a com port and not a TCP/IP port.  I hope that makes sense.  Thank you for your time!

Phil

[Richard Burts]

Phil

Thank you for the clarification. I now understand that you want to connect not to network devices like routers or switches but to connect to other kinds of devices. If they have the async serial interface for management, frequently presented as the 9 pin connector, then it may work using the 2509.

I am still puzzled about part of what you describe when you say:"but the software that is used to communicate with those devices is looking for a com port and not a TCP/IP port.". Is this software on the device to be controlled (the weather station, UPS controller, power switch, etc) or is this software on the device that wants to communicate with them?

I am guessing that this is software on the device that wants to communicate with the weather station etc. If you were to connect a PC directly to the weather station then you would need some peice of software (commonly I see software such as Hyperterm, TeraTerm, or SecureCRT to do this) and that software takes care of the com port manipulation. With the 2509 the com port stuff is done by the 2509 and you do not need special software on the PC. On the 2509 you will connect cables from async interfaces to the devices to be controlled (weather station etc) and you will configure reverse telnet on the 2509 so that you can connect to specific async interfaces. Then your PC connects to the 2509, frequently via telnet but other access may be possible, and executes reverse telnet for the async interface connected to the device that it wants to control (weather station etc). The com port functionality is provided by the 2509.

HTH

Rick

[Phillip Pacier]

Thank you for your help!

The software that connects to the devices in question look to connect to those devices via a physical serial port (com port).  There is no provision to connect to those devices via TCP/IP.  Thus, I need some way of creating a virtual com port to then telnet to the 2509.  I wasn't sure if there was already software available to accomplish this.

Thanks again!

Phil

[Richard Burts]

Phil

Apparently I did not explain it in a way that makes sense to you. So let me try again. The function of the serial/com port is provided by the 2509. The 2509 is not using telnet or TCP/IP to connect to the device but is just presenting a serial or com port interface to the remote device. So you do not need any special software for the com port connection to the remote device.

You do need to connect to the 2509 and there are several alternatives for that. You could access the 2509 via its console port, or you can telnet to the 2509, or (depending on the software that it is running and how it is configured) you may be able to SSH to the 2509.

HTH

Rick

[Phillip Pacier]

Thank you for your time and patience with me!

I did understand that part (I think).  So the 2509 has 8 "com" ports.  My question is, how do my computers on the network see these ports?  For example, if my windows box establishes a telnet connection to port 2001 on the 2509, does COM1 automatically connect to port 1?  Or similarly if my linux box connects to the 2509 on port 2005 does ttyS5 automatically connect to port 5?  It seems to me that there needs to be some action taken on the client machines to know which com ports are supposed to route through the telnet connection to the 2509.

Thanks again!

Phil

[Richard Burts]

Phil

It seems that you still do not understand what I am trying to explain. Your Windows box will not not establish a telnet connection to port 2001 nor your Linux box connect to port 2005. Those boxes do not establish the connection. You connect the async serial port of the 2509 to the com port of windows or linux and they just speak on their com port.

The Port numbers relate to particular async lines. So 2001 is related to async line 1 and port 2005 is related to async line number 5.

HTH

Rick

[Phillip Pacier]

OK I understand that now.  That doesn't seem very useful these days.  I was under the impression that you could accomplish the reverse with this unit - connect serial devices such as modems and terminal node controllers that various computers on the network could access.

Thanks again.

[Richard Burts]

Phil

Whether it is useful or not depends on what you want it to do. In an early post in this thread you explained that: "I have devices that connect to the serial ports of computers.  Devices  such as terminal node controllers, weather stations, UPS control lines,  power switches, etc.  I would like to make these devices available to  any computer on the network"

If I understand that correctly it seems to me that the 2509 could be useful. If for example there is a UPS control line that communicates via a serial com port, then it could connect to a single PC. But you could also connect the UPS control line to a port of the 2509. Then any PC in the network could access the 2509, and through the 2509 any PC could access the UPS control line.

If I have mis-understood what you want to achieve then please clarify.

HTH

Rick

[Phillip Pacier]

Richard Burts wrote:
If I understand that correctly it seems to me that the 2509 could be useful. If for example there is a UPS control line that communicates via a serial com port, then it could connect to a single PC. But you could also connect the UPS control line to a port of the 2509. Then any PC in the network could access the 2509, and through the 2509 any PC could access the UPS control line.

Ah!  This is precicely what I am looking to do!  I wuold like to connect all of my serial "devices" to the 2509, and then in turn access those devices through the 2509 from the various computers on the network.  However, the software that talks to these devices must talk to a com port (COMx, ttySx, virtual or physical) to interact with the devices.  How do I make the jump from a client computer through the 2509 to the device?

Phil

[Richard Burts]

Phil

You configure the 2509 so that it is accessible to the other computers in the network. At a minimum this involves configuring a router interface with an IP address that is reachable from the other computers and allowing telnet/SSH access to the router. (as options you might need to configure routing logic if some computers are not on the same local subnet with the router address, and you might want to configure authentication on the router to control who can access it).

Then you configure "reverse telnet" on the router to access the async interfaces which connect to the serial devices. It might look something like this:

ip host UPS1 2001 10.1.1.1

specifying port 2001 associates this connection with async line 1. And the use of ports 20nn will provide a raw character data stream which is appropriate for most com/tty/console serial ports. The IOS software provided by Cisco on the 2509 provides the translation between the telnet data of the computer and the character data stream sent to the UPS device.

Then to access the UPS device some computer telnets to the 2509. After establishing its telnet session the computer issues the command UPS1 and the router will connect the telnet session to the async line connected to the UPS and send the character data stream.

HTH

Rick

[Javier Henderson]

Phil is looking for the device drivers we used to offer for download, which you would install on Windows systems and would make an asynch port on a 2509/2511 appear as a local COM port.

Phil, I haven't seen them in a while, I'll see if we can still offer them for download.