Specifications

©
2002, David K. Z. Harris
45
Pg. 45
© 2002
David K. Z. Harris
Synopsys Basic Field Office
Ø WAN for main traffic
Ø PSTN (ISDN) for field dialup
² (Public Switched Telephone Network)
Ø Local Conserver Host
CS
1
Internet
serial
H
1
2
H
Router
DSU
P.S.T.N.
ISDN
In the field office, the field office router also became the Console Server, and
the ‘local dialup connection’ for staff near the field offices.
By adding a local Conserver host in each field office, the system administrators
now had a tool to understand what happened to the servers in the field offices
when the WAN link failed. This helped uncover system dependencies (such as
libraries mounted over the WAN, or DNS dependencies) that would hamper
‘local’ work if the WAN was down. Knowing about a problem is the first step
in fixing it.
The dialup access saved significant ISP costs each month. By using an ISDN
line into each office, the dialup connections could support speeds greater than
28.8 and 33.6 Kbps. However, this also provided the network administrators a
method to ‘be on both sides of a broken WAN’. With the primary link down,
they could now perform diagnostics from the field office, as well as from their
NOC. This required a local authentication host at the field office, which could
be managed from the main office while the WAN was working normally.