Analog POTS vs. LTE Cellular
Recently we’ve been on client calls where people have expressed interest in switching from 9600 Baud Analog POTS line to LTE cellular wireless connections for Out-of-Band Management. There are a variety of reasons why companies are looking to make the switch to LTE including:
- Not knowing if a POTS line is connected / disconnected when called upon for OOB
- Slow connection speeds for OOB remote access
- POTS lines run over the Public Switched Telephone Network, are globally accessible, and potentially susceptible to attack
- Cost- analog lines run upwards of $1,800 per annum; cellular wireless is < $200/year globally
- International access- POTS lines are hard to get into data centers and maybe even harder to get outside of CONUS
- LTE provide “instant site turn up” (provided you have signal); lead times for POTS lines require LOA and can be lengthy
Reasons why Cellular wireless can be problematic:
- Signal strength in interior Telco rooms. Although cellular wireless is a principal communication type, sometimes it’s hard to browse or push data inside a Telco closet. To check viability of LTE OOB, use your smart phone to see if you can browse from the location where you’d like to deploy OOB
- Organizing multiple carriers for International locations can be tricky
- Lots of equipment choices for OOB, what’s the best combination of product/price/service
How CDI deals with all of this:
- TriAxxess– A single box for network, analog and LTE access on the same 1u chassis. Use your existing analog line to test if LTE signal is available at remote sites, if you have signal pull the plug on POTS line
- OBM– software to pull everything together, both CDI and non-CDI devices- OBM will let you know if a site is offline before an outage occurs
- CDI delivers the devices “PRE-LIT” on a private LTE circuit, Static Private IP’s built into each device- turnkey LTE, walled off from the Internet
- Power Cycle capability built into the same 1u appliance used for OOB
- Built-in encryption- FIPS 140-2, PCI, HIPAA compliance