Telnet to dial-up modem or virtual dial-up terminal?

[nessman]

With VoIP gaining acceptance - it presents a problem with dial-up modems. For instance, if I'm called up at 2:00 am with a system problem an hour or so away, usually I'll dial into the PBX and see what I can do before driving out.

Well, these days - POTS lines are expensive, so VoIP through the cable company or things like MagicJack are more economical options. But they don't work very well with dial-up modems. Plus with the ability to tether my Blackberry to my laptop, or grab a WiFi signal somewhere, and it being less likely I can grab an analog line somewhere - it's getting hard to plug a modem in somewhere and dial out.

Is there a telnet-to-modem gateway or something like that out there, where I can use a POTS line at our office - just telnet to the modem and dial out from there? Or a virtual modem terminal or something?

 

[DocVic]

We use the Lantronics MSS1 for most of our remote IP to Serial PBX comms now. There are some really neat IP to serial servers now that do all kinds of neat monitoring, but all we need is basics. Lantronics, Digi, ECData, GridConnect... are also available to you. We even connect on our Android handsets now. Pretty cool!

DocVic
Dedicated to Nortel Products till the end.
Need help?

http://www.TSS-CO.com

 

[nessman]

In my case, we don't have a POTS line at home (we use MagicJack for our home phone), and my company isn't going to reimburse for a POTS line either. I work for a vendor and have to do the on-call thing - and we have techs who also have VoIP at home for their home phones. The majority of our customer's systems we have to dial in to as getting VPN access, etc... for every customer tends to be problematic.

One solution we are doing now is having a PC back into the shop we can VNC into and run ProComm from there. It works but we're at the mercy of a number of variables (other techs using it, problems with the PC, bandwidth issues, latency and bitmap caching from the VNC client, etc...).

So what I'm looking for is a blackbox so to speak that we can plug into the network and into a modem - telnet into it and basically use it to run modem commands (ATDT, etc...) to dial out to any given customer location.

Any ideas?

 

[DocVic]

The IP to serial solution is simple. I assume you have internet access and can IP into your customers network. From there, just IP to your port and start talking to the system. It's still secure and doesn't open any other ports into their system. If the customer will not let you do that, tell them to pay for your POTS line. It's all about good customer service.

DocVic
Dedicated to Nortel Products till the end.
Need help?

http://www.TSS-CO.com

 

[nessman]

You have to assume that I cannot IP into my customer's networks.

Because I work for a good size vendor, we have 1,000's of customers. To be able to get into their networks would require a number of VPN clients on each of our laptops, passwords, a number of SecureID fobs, jumping through their IT security hoops to get clearance, etc.

However, the majority of their PBX's can be reached via their maintenance modems or SEB's.

Me, and a growing number of people have VoIP at home instead of copper POTS lines. Dial-up modems over a VoIP rarely, if ever, work.

What I'm looking for is something that we can put on our network at the office, telnet into that, and use it as a gateway of sorts to a standard external modem.

Simple workflow would be like this...

Me -> Internet -> Office IP -> Firewall port 23 -> Black Box Telnet Thingie -> Modem -> POTS line -> Telco

Any ideas?

 

[GHTROUT]

How about you Remote Desktop into the office where there is a PC with Procomm and modem. A rack of cheap PCs even.

--
Nortel Resources at GHTROUT.com
--

 

[nessman]

That's pretty much what we're doing now. But you have to log on to the VPN, VNC into the PC, log on to that, hope no one else is using it, hope the mobile carrier has enough bandwidth for the VNC session for those of us who have air cards or tether their smartphones to their laptops, etc... etc... etc...

Was just hoping for a simple solution that would be more suited to techs in the field - less hoops to jump through.