Over the last 25 years, DECservers have provided more than 10 million terminal and printer connections, in all kinds of environments and in over 50 countries around the world. A testament to their reliability, many of these DECservers are still in operation today – and the IT administrators that installed them have passed the torch to you, the IT administrator who is unfamiliar with how to configure and integrate a DECserver.
Regardless of how or why, you just inherited a network that includes DECservers – or have been tasked with adding them to the network – and you’ve never worked with one before!
As the DECserver Technical Support Engineer at Vnetek Communications, I hear questions every day that start with, "How do I..." add, assign, change, configure, connect, find, fix, get, migrate, open, recover, reset, save, set, start, transfer, wire up... the list goes on and on.
During the next several weeks I’ll be posting specific tips for dealing with the most popular “How do I” questions.
This week I begin by summarizing the different DECserver software versions. Whether you call it the operating firmware, operating system, DNAS, MNENG2 or MNENG3, here you’ll become familiar with the version you have and what it will support
DECserver Software (DNAS) Major Release History
| Version | Release Date | Added Support For: |
| 1.0 |
April 1993 |
|
| 2.0 |
June 1996 |
- RADIUS client and server
- SecurID
- Dialer Service
- Inactivity timers for SLIP and PPP
- Windows-based management utility ASM
|
| 2.2 |
October 1997 |
- DHCP
- WINS/DNS
- CBCP
- TCP/IP
- Keepalive Timer
- LPD
|
| 2.3A |
November 1998 |
|
| 2.4 |
April 2001 |
|
| 2.5 |
May 2003 |
|
| 2.6 |
July 2003 |
|
| 3.0 |
April 2004 |
- Multi connections Telnet on all telnet listeners plus the console.
- The ability to set any Telnet listeners TCP port from default to any port between 1-65000. Includes console
|
| 3.1 |
November 2004 |
|
| 3.2 |
June 20005 |
- Ability to force the disable of TCP delayed acknowledge.
- Added Printer and Internet configuration wizard
- Added ability to set the TCP Keepalive Timer to less than 30 seconds
- Added ability to remove a 100ms delay in sending serial data to a TCP peer.
|
| 3.3 |
April 2006 |
- RFC-2217 (An extension of the Telnet protocol for remote configuration of port characteristics)
- Ability to synchronize the DECserver with NTP servers on the LAN using SNTP (RFC-2030)
- Obtain servers internal characteristics from a DHCP server including IP address, subnet mask and DNS server address.
|
| 3.4 |
November 20006 |
- Event Notification System
- Provides 24/7 monitoring of critical serial device events coupled with an immediate notification when the event occurs.
- Notification sending to email, cell phone, pager, PDA or any SMTP device.
|
| 3.5 |
March 2007 |
- Device discovery supported by ASM. Allows users to easily find and identify DECserver products deployed in their network.
- FTP client added. Provides users with a third method for loading DNAS software and/or the device boot rom.
|
| 3.6 |
July 2007 |
- Flexibility to assign Telnet listener TCP ports between 1 and 65535 for any uniquely assigned IP address.
- Support to save and restore the server characteristics to and from a PCMCIA Flash Card
|