Re: Implementing PIX Failover over a Fibre link?

[Carson Gaspar <carson () tla org>]

--On Monday, September 18, 2000 12:38 PM -0400 "Marcus J. Ranum" 
<mjr () nfr net> wrote:

> Carson Gaspar wrote:
> Today, this is not possible (at least, not easily). The PIX failover
> cable is a serial cable with some high/low pins to determine
> primary/secondary and box "upness".
>
>          Couldn't someone build their own by just taking two computers
>          (e.g: linux boxes or *bsd or whatever) and having them listen
>          to the ports, then talk across the network and replicate the
>          serial port state via IP? That's basically what the old
>          "emulate a serial link over IP" computer games hacks use. I
>          wonder if you could even use the same software! :)  Of course
>          this begs the question of keeping those machines up and fault
>          tolerant, but that's left as an exercise for the reader. :)

Of course. That's why I said "not easily" :)

You'd have to to various bits of high/low pin magic, so your tunnel would 
have to include more than just the Tx/Rx data. I wouldn't be surprised if 
someone makes a RS-232<->Fiber converter device that could be made to work 
with some hackery. Just don't call Cisco for support problems :)

--
Carson Gaspar -- carson () tla org
Queen Trapped in a Butch Body


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