Re: 56K dialup for CCIL
On Thu, 6 Dec 2001, Russell Coker wrote:
> On Thu, 6 Dec 2001 06:06, Chuck Peters wrote:
> > One of our Network Admins Eric likes the USR Total Control and says we can
> > pick up a used one for a good price. Does anyone have experience with
> > them or comments on the performance and reliablity?
>
> A google search on "USR Total Control" turns up two security issues in the
> first page of results...
>
> > We also offer text/shell dialup access because a few people still use slow
> > old machines and a number of seniors just use PINE for email. We can keep
> > a few of the old analog lines going for them, but it would be prefable to
> > offer both ppp and shell on the same dialup pool like we are now.
>
> I suggest getting a Cyclades card and running Portslave the machine that has
> it. It allows PPP, SLIP, telnet, rsh, and ssh connections from the terminal
> server to a specified machine (controlled by RADIUS).
>
> > We will be using OpenLDAP for authenication. It is a must that we be able
> > to control users online time and vary it for a few, volunteers and other
> > specified people get extra time while most of the users get a couple of
> > hours per day and we limit it during heavy usage. Does anyone have
> > comments on that issue?
>
> There are a number of RADIUS servers that talk LDAP. FreeRADIUS seems pretty
> good, I expect it can do what you want. Portslave supports limiting connect
> time based on the RADIUS data.
>
> > CCIL is expecting to spend 5-7K on this so that kind of limits our
> > equipment options. Maybe something besides the USR Total Control would be
> > a better choice. Any recommendations?
>
> Cyclades products cost considerably less. See http://www.cyclades.com/ .
>
>
At the ISP I work at, we used to work with a Total Control for our dial up
customers, and we bought a couple of Cyclades PR4000's to replace the
Total Control.
Frankly, I'm not too happy about both. The TC still has some unexplained
problems, which couldn't be solved by their tech support. The only way we
could keep the machine running, was by shutting it down of 30 minutes
every night. Of course, I don't know if this is a general TC problem, or
if our TC is just buggy.
Now, we also have some difficulties with some of the more advanced
features of the PR4000. Cyclades Tech Support is quite helpful, but hasn't
been able to solve these problems yet, after 4 months of debugging, trying
new firmware releases, etc.
Maybe this info helps,
Teun
--
Teun Vink - teun@moonblade.net - icq: 15001247 - http://teun.moonblade.net
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