Remote Access to older controllers

[AH64Armament]

We have a bunch of customers with SX200-EL's and SX200ICP's.
Our office has a 1FB from a Comcast Cable modem that we share between our FAX machine and our RMAT PC with a modem.
We are planning to eliminate Comcast as we're paying nearly $5000 per year with them for the phone line.

Does anyone have experience using an ATA (Grandstream, etc), that supports a modem running at 9600bps? Or an RS232 device.

My office admin are thinking that we can use an ATA for our side of the connection. I tried doing this several years ago with no luck.


The sites with 200ICP's, I'm pushing them to converge their network and provide a VPN connection.

The sites with 200EL's - I'm thinking an RS232 to telnet device connected to the customer network and connected to the maintenance port on the system might work.

 

[nytalkin]

I never had success trying to operate modems through SIP, analog to digital convertors, etc. The negotiations between modems always fails. We have hundreds of these older installations and have a single POTS line that we share in our office, our bill for this is about $40 per month. If someone has a better solution I'd like to hear about it too.

I suppose you're entitled to your opinion, I'm just not going to suppose very hard.

 

[jpruder]

I would go for telnet to serial convert and vpn access for both if possible. Certainly these devices can sit on any network accessable via vpn and in the case of icp might make it easier if routing is not there between data and voice vlans

 

[AH64Armament]

I found a Synectix LAN 232 device and configured it.
I can get it to pass the RS232 port from two different 3300's - one is running MiVB 8, the other is running MiVB 9.4.
I get gibberish when attempting to connect to a 200EL's maintenance port.

Baud = 9600
Data Bits = 8
parity = None
Stop Bits = 1
Flow Control = tried both none and Hardware.
Local port number = 23 (telnet)
Remote port number = not used in Server mode
Connection mode = Server
Connection Protocol = telnet

I was told the device was found in one of our tech's trucks after he died about 5 years ago and nobody knew the status or history of this.
I was thinking that it might be faulty, but considering it works to the 3300's, I'm thinking that it is okay.

I looked at the PBX with another PC and checked the settings on the maint port - shows 9600 Space 7 1.
This LAN 232 device doesn't do Space for the parity.
I have always understood that N81 is the same as S71.


Anyhow, I'm considering ordering one of the available devices from Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/Serial-Ethernet-Converter-Adapter-Supports/dp/B08M42FL5W/

- this device comes with its own power supply and also supports PoE

https://www.amazon.com/USR-TCP232-302-Serial-Ethernet-Converter-Support/dp/B01GPGPEBM/

- this device has the wrong connector, so it would also need an adapter and maybe a nul-modem adapter.

https://www.amazon.com/CERRXIAN-Ethernet-Serial-Device-Converter/dp/B087J9F6LF/

- this device appears to come with both power supply and a DB9F to DB9F cable – it’ll need an gender adapter and/or nul modem adapter.

 

[Lundah]

Space" isn't a valid parity bit value. It's either even, odd, or none. I think the 200EL/ML uses 7E1, but it's been well over a decade since I've worked on one.

 

[AH64Armament]

I re-checked... and took a photo of what it shows.

I was told many years ago that it what Mitel chose to use, and it's technically the same as N81.

 

[jpruder]

If I find the time, will test here I have a lan232 dou and the cheap 302. Get my 302's out of china on ebay

 

[AH64Armament]

We got another RS232 to Telnet device -

https://www.amazon.com/CERRXIAN-Ethernet-Serial-Device-Converter/dp/B087J9F6LF/

- It too showed only Gibberish.
Turns out the Main Control Card was causing gibberish through the remote device. Locally it worked fine, but through the devices, it only showed garbage. I replaced the MCC and the replacement card worked fine.

Regardless of what the system shows as 9600 S71, the system will not communicate with those settings.

The CERRXIAN device would not allow KERMIT backups to succeed. It would show a bunch of errors and eventually stop/fail.
We have ordered another device - I hope to test it out next week.

The Synectix LAN 232 did allow the backup to succeed. It showed 3 corrections. I was able to restore that database and it was successful.

 

[jpruder]

Good to hear, I think earlier, I had to use the port emulatot for the usr device to connect properly. Just going by memory