Opengear, a unit of Digi International, today added two networking appliances to its portfolio that provide a serial interface through which networks can be configured out of band.
The CM8000 Series appliances provide access to either four or eight serial ports, an integrated power distribution unit and access to Ethernet via RJ-45 and small form-factor pluggable (SFP) connectors for copper or fiber connectivity. It is also designed to be remotely managed via a Lighthouse management framework developed by Opengear.
The OM1300 Series, meanwhile, provides access to a smaller integrated appliance that enables zero-touch provisioning in, for example, a retail environment where there is a small network closet.
Opengear CTO Doug Wadkins said interest in out-of-band networking appliances has increased as the number of outages continues to rise. The latest report from ThousandEyes, a unit of Cisco that tracks network resiliency, shows there were 255 global outage events across Internet service providers (ISPs), cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks, and edge networks from January 5th to January 11th alone. The total of outage events increased by 28% compared to the 199 outages from the week prior. Specific to the U.S., there were 135 outages, which is up by 90% from 71 outages the week prior.
The appliances provided by Opengear provide a means to restore networking services in a way that doesn’t always require a technician to be dispatched to re-provision networking infrastructure, noted Wadkins. Many organizations these days also can’t afford to dispatch a technician to resolve these issues in a timely manner, he added. In effect, for the want of a simple out-of-band appliance the battle to ensure network services are available is often lost, noted Wadkins.
The challenge is that many organizations have also simply forgotten there is need for a serial interface to initially provision networking infrastructure, so when there is an outage it often takes them longer to respond than it should simply because no one thought through the fundamentals of network change management, added Wadkins. Some network engineers have been, despite all evidence to the contrary, told there is no longer a need for a serial interface, he added.
The one thing that is apparent is that more workloads are now being pushed to the network edge as IT environments become more distributed. As a result, there are more applications than ever, including soon artificial intelligence (AI) agents, that are going to be dependent on networks being available to access services. The simple truth is organizations have never been more dependent on networks that many assume will be available even though they know from hard experience just how fragile they really are.
Ultimately, each organization will need to determine for itself just how much networking expertise they require, but the demand for that expertise continues to outstrip the available supply. Providing the limited supply of network engineers with the tools they need to succeed is, of course, crucial. The issue is remembering to make sure the appliances are at hand before they are actually needed.
