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Remote Router Administration?
bduncan asks: "I'm wondering if the Slashdot community knows of bandwidth and remote admin friendly routers, accessible using either a telnet port or at least lynx (both from the inside network of course). I remotely admin a number of installations using Linux systems to do firewalling, email etc. and they all have dialup facilities in case the router misbehaves for some reason. This used to be easy, as the routers would normally provide a telnet port and/or a low bandwidth HTTP facility for setup, resetting etc.Unfortunately, the last installation using a major brand router was across the pond (in the UK) and provides only an HTTP interface, but uses high-bandwidth flash on top of this! Now, instead of just dialing in and using telnet or lynx to get to the router, I'm forced to set up a PPP connection into the Linux machine and then soak up most of the bandwidth with all kinds of useless Flash animation, just to make some changes on the router. Typing into the Flash forms can take many minutes to be echoed back and executed. Tunneling through to the Linux machine using SSH is an option, but of course not until the router is set up properly. Does anyone still make a low-bandwidth remote admin friendly DSL router for use in the UK (or anywhere else for that matter)?"
SMC makes various inexpensive routers that have remote admin capability via a simple web interface (not flash, etc.).
Try zyxel. They're cheap and good.
-- unix is for people without a social life - Patrick van Eijk
Odd. I've never seen a flash-heavy interface for router admin. That would require quite a bit more flash memory for the onboard webserver wouldn't it? I use a netgear mr814 at home and it allows you to remote admin via http only (sorry, I know you're looking for cmdline via terminal). I haven't seen a consumer router that offers that for some time now. You may end up having to go low end "pro" equipment. In such a case, I'd say check ebay and find a gently used Cisco, Netgear, Foundry, router that does what you require. I'm the kind of belt and suspenders guy that prefers a serial cable and terminal emulation. That's just me though.
Cyclades, and god know how many others, make terminal servers. Or you could stuff a bunch of serial ports into a linux box and build your own.
You never heard of Cisco...
Flash for administration? That's silly and it's obviously something the marketing dept came up with.
Replace it with something that runs good ol' IOS.
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A surprising number of routers actually use snmp for configuring via their windows only client.
If you can find the MIB for it, you could be able to use some linux snmp client for configuration.
As to remote admin over dial; if you need to do that then a CLI, or at the very least a text mode menu option should be a prerequisite. It really doesn't matter what the interface is like, since you will almost certainly only be making minor configuration tweaks with the CLI once the router is up and running.
If you can afford the price premium, I'd go for one of the established CLI's like Cisco's IOS. While they can be daunting at first they do have the advantage of being a skill portable to a huge range of devices, especially in the case of IOS, and there are dozens of places with template configurations to get you started.
On the otherhand the general consensus on the UK Broadband newsgroups seems to be that Draytek make some excellent kit. I can certainly vouch for that, since I use one myself - a Vigor 2600we to be precise, which cost about 160, but the 2600g is just out that ups the wireless support from 802.11b to 802.11g. To summarise the key features in addition to the wireless:
- Lightweight HTTP GUI
- CLI access (straightforward, but no IOS feature-wise)
- DHCP server / DDNS support
- ISDN on some models - dial directly into the router to manage it!
- Stateful firewall with content filtering & DDoS protection
- VPN support
- Management tools including, NTP, SNMP & remote syslog support
All in all a very nice bit of kit, and unlike a certain Netgear product you don't have to help DDOS the University of Michigan NTP server.UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
All I use at the end of my DSL connection is a "network termination device" provided by the ISP, which I assume is a router that's so simple, it's almost just a wire. At any rate, with something as simple and transparent as that, I never get "router misbehavior." I don't know what the ISP's you use provide, but I'd assume they give customers something; I don't know if you need more complex routing to be done on the device, but whatever needs to be done for your internal network should really take place on the firewall anyway.
It's all going according to
Most of these enhancements to the stock WRT54G can be accomplished as changes to it's filesystem's ramdisk so that they are not permanent and a simple reboot of the router will get you back to the non-hacked state. If you're feeling brave however, you can try to create your own firmware and commit it to flash at the risk of messing up and creating a small doorstop out of a perfectly good router.
Unfortunately the built in capabilities accessed via it's HTTP interface are a bit slim and simplistic (ie. no SNMP router logging and the built in logging capabilities are VERY basic, only 5 port filters, no Static IP assignments based on MAC addresses, no port triggering) but par for a home/office grade router. Besides, you could always add what you want via your root linux access neh?
Reviews of the router performance have been positive, with little difference in bandwidth in running with WEP on or off (unlike many other inexpensive wireless routers, which have up to a 50% reduction in wireless bandwidth with encryption turned on).
Pretty exciting to have a little router that has the potential to do much more than the usually lukewarm manufacturer's firmware allows.
Dave
There are no stupid questions...just stupid people.
I can confirm this - my DLink DSL-504 ADSL router has an annoying flash animation on the login screen, it's a nightmare through low-bandwidth VNC connections. Only the later firmware updates though.
since when is a web interface considered less easy to implement than a telnet command line interface? sheesh. web interfaces aren't usable over serial. implement them as client software, not on the device.
I am sure that everyone here would like to know which brand/model that is and avoid it like the plague.
To answer your question, almost all brand name routers offer telnet access to the CLI. They also have a console serial port offering a direct connection to the CLI into which you can plug a modem for dial-up access to the CLI. The brands to look at are Cisco, 3Com, Nortel, Juniper and many more. In fact, you should avoid any router that does not offer telnet/ssh access and a console serial port.
Some of the new home based broadband routers like the LinkSys have only a web interface which is adequate if you have physical access to the router but, as you have seen this can be problematic.
Please post which router you were stuck with.
Roll your own box with Freesco. The base install has telnet and a web control panel but you can install the SSH package and be happy.
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This must be a cheapie consumer routers intended to be "install and forget" devices. No serious self-respecting network/communications equipment make would ever rely solely on such cruft for out-of-band management of devices!
(I even wrote about my Soekris/m0n0wall box on my website recently).
My Netgear WGR614 802.llg router can be controlled via HTTP. What I love more about it is that it can update its own ip on DynDns.org so I don't have to keep remembering the IP address and just use this free service to create my own domain name. I even using remote connect to my home PC from work.
Sounds like you're using a soho router.
That said, if you were using a Cisco 2600 or 3700 series router, it would be a simple thing to slip in a WIC-1-AM, which is a one port analog modem. This modem can provide simple console access, handle PPP, dial-backup, callback, and probably several other neat things. You can implement authentication based on local accounts, or on authentication servers (tacacs/radius).
I've got about 200 of these deployed around the U.S. and they have been a major life saver many times when we've needed to trouble a circuit or router, or even to do bandwidth (port) upgrades. I no longer have to have my team travel around the country to install network modules or WIC cards. We can have an office technician on the phone and walk them through power down, removal, and re-insertion of most hardware, without having to give anyone else console access.
Sig??? I don't need no stinkin Sig!
Netopia and Cayman Routers both have very decent CLI (telnet) interfaces for configuration and simple web interfaces. Netopia seems to be a prefered dsl router maker for a number of european phone companies (not sure about england).
Netscreen makes an excellent firewall/router product. You can SSH, Telnet, HTTP, HTTPS and SNMP the box.
Just curious which brand uses flash for their administrative frontend?