[rescue] rear end rescue :-)

[Curtis H. Wilbar Jr.]

Not really ontopic rescue... however I respect the great pool of
knowledge on this list, and hope that the fact that this "rescues"
my butt to be close enough to not aggravate the off topic gods....

I'm contracting with a company, and there are a few things we need...

1. a "enterprise" class switch... at least 16 ports, but 24 would
   be better.  Something that does Gig and 100baseTX.  If it were
   not for the fact that they want the Gig for interserver traffic
   I'd recommend something like a Cisco 2924XL.  If it can do
   10baseT as well that would be good in case we have the odd 
   console server, etc that might need it.  Right now they have a
   Dell gigabit switch... but it really is a workgroup type switch
   (no management, vpn, etc).  Reliability is key... it has to
   be reliable and dependable.

2. a console server... either serial, or one of those fangled
   ethernet attached video/kb/mouse ones... and if that type it
   would need to have "client" access from Windows or Linux.
   A Livingston Portmaster 10 port (we only have half a rack at
   a colo) would be great... only improvement would be something
   like that that would support ssh to it rather than just telnet.
   (I set it up so telnet to a port # gets you to a console port
   on a hosting box, then I filter those ports out from coming in
   the ethernet and setup local users that initiate telnet's to
   localhost and the appropriate port number... only problem is
   since you can only telnet, the password used is in plaintext
   so for real security it should be changed each time it is used
   so if they only supported ssh).

What would make a cool device is a "dongle" that you connect to 
a serial port, and took ethernet in... and supported ssh :-) ...
that would be cool if it could be produced cheaply enough (although
a bit wasteful on IP addresses).

Thanks to anyone who has any constructive tips and recommendations.

-- Curt