On more than one occasion I have needed to access the console port of a switch, but I wasn’t physically there but I did have a router near the unit. You can easily setup your router to act as a Terminal server, allowing you to use a flat rolled cable between the Router’s AUX port and the switch’s CONSOLE port. First you need to properly configure your AUX port:
line aux 0
modem InOut
transport input all
stopbits 1
flowcontrol hardware
Now in order to use this feature, log into your router and do the following:
- from the command prompt enter: SHOW LINE
- Find the line number for AUX (in this example it is Line 5)
- Telnet to the IP address of the router you are logged into, but when you telnet you will need to indicate a specific port. That port is 2000 + the line number. So in this example your command would look like this: ‘telnet 172.17.10.1 2005’
- This will get you access to the remote device
- When you are finished with the session on the remote device break out with CTRL+ALT+6, followed by x one second later. If you by chance use SecureCRT for your Telnet sessions you can setup a key map that sends the following ASCII standard for that command ‘\036\px’. You can read more about this on VanDyke’s SecureCRT Forum.
- Once you are back in the original device you can return to the remote device by simply pressing the ENTER key.
- If you are finished with your remote session, you can issue a CLEAR command to close that connection. In this example the command would be ‘CLEAR LINE 5’
