FRM220 Network Management card

The FRM220-NMC-R3 is a Network Management Controller card that can be placed in a compatible FRM220 series chassis to provide device management functions. The management interface supports a local RS-232 serial console or remote TCP/IP management by Telnet, HTTP and SNMPv1, v2c protocols and is designed to be hot swapped so that it may be field replaced without affecting any online service of any other rack cards.

The card also supports online firmware upgrade from TFTP server, using any user interface, without affecting any other inserted line card's transmissions. Support for any standard NMS is provided by the included enterprise MIB file.  CTC Union also provides and maintains their own EMS (Element Management System) which is a Java based client/server manager for monitoring and maintaining a large number of network elements over a long period of time.

Resilience

If the NMC card should develop a fault, all media converter cards in the chassis will continue to run with their current configuration settings, with no negative effect to any traffic. The defective NMC may be pulled from the running chassis, without affecting any other media converter card.

When a replacement NMC is inserted into the "hot" chassis, it will boot and immediately recognize that it is booting into an already running "hot" chassis. The TCP/IP and SNMP settings will either be factory default (if the card was not previously provisioned) or the settings will reflect previous provisioning. All provisioning settings from all the installed media converter cards and all remote media converters will be downloaded into the new NMC card and saved. If any future system power off is experienced, all previous settings are restored to each media converter card from the NMC.

Console Mode

The FRM220-NMC features a direct connect Console Port, labeled 'Console' on the card face, is an RS-232 asynchronous console terminal port designed to facilitate monitoring the condition of all converter cards and links as well as setup of all networking parameters through the use of a standard text based terminal or any terminal emulation program running on a Personal Computer.

A laptop computer connection to the computer is very simple. The FRM220-NMC acts as a DCE to the PC's DTE communications port. The only hardware required is a DB9-pin one-to-one, male to female cable. If the laptop does not have a serial COM port, you may also use a commercially available USB to RS-232 adapter.