Re: Remote power cycle recommendations

[Stephen Satchell <list () satchell net>]

I've worked with APC, Synaccess, and a couple other brands of power 
controllers.  One constant:  the IP stack implementations tend to be a 
bit fragile.  This is not restricted to power controllers; I have a GPS 
NTP appliance that is affected by the same sorts of things.

I'll stick with APC and Synaccess, because I currently work with those. 
You want to avoid presenting these conditions to the embedded stack:

1.  ARP storms
2.  Lots of layer 2 and layer 3 broadcast traffic
3.  Probes for ports not implemented in the stack
4.  Too much traffic (SNMP in particular)

I like keeping all such devices on a single management VLAN dedicated to 
embedded-stack devices.  The Ethernet hardware tends to be competent at 
filtering packets not intended for the device, so you don't have to go 
overboard with VLANs.  It's the software behind the hardware that is 
easy to overwhelm if you throw too many packets at it.

(But you knew this already)