How Can I Make My CoBOS Device Connect by Hostname?

Outbound connections from CoBOS device servers can be done a variety of ways:

•     Autostart (Autoconnect on bootup)
•     On Serial (upon receiving serial data from the attached serial interface)
•     In Modem Mode (the device server emulating a Modem ‘dialing’ a TCP/IP connection)
•     In Manual Mode (where a serial input directs what IP host for the device server to connect to)
•     And others.  

The complete list of Connect Modes is found in our FAQ database.  See Connect Modes for CoBOS Based Devices.

Note: In the current version of firmware, Manual Mode is the only outbound connection method that allows a CoBOS device server to make a connection to an IP host via hostname.

Manual Mode can be enabled by setting ConnectMode to any value of  “x4” (eg, 04, 14, C4, D4, etc) in the Channel1 Menu of the device server’s Telnet Configuration menu.  

To test Manual Mode, do the following:
•     Set the Connect Mode to any Manual Mode setting, for example, D4 (Manual Connection with Character Response)
•     Connect a terminal to the serial port of the device server and start a session.
•     Reboot the device server, and soon, you will receive a ‘D’ from the device server (meaning ‘disconnected’).

•     Make an outbound connection in Manual Mode by typing:

     C<ip_address:tcpport> or C<FQDN:tcpport>

followed by a carriage return  
(where FQDN is the fully qualified domain name of the remote host).

Note: You may also use / (slash) in place of : (colon) to separate IP and TCP port.

     C<ip_address/tcpport> or C<FQDN/tcpport>

For example:

CSunfirev240.support.int.lantronix.com/23, or
CSunfirev240.support.int.lantronix.com:23

followed by a carriage return makes a telnet connection to a host named Sunfirev240 on the network.  

A DNS server must be configured in the CoBOS device server setting for connection via hostname to work. The DNS server is configured in the telnet configuration menu option 0 – Server setting.

When Connect Mode D4 is used, a successful connection will return a ‘C’ on the screen (‘connected’) connecting you to a login prompt from the Sunfirev240.  

A failed connection will come back as an ‘N’ (‘no connection’).

To disconnect from a Manual Connection, you can:
•     configure DisConnect Mode to drop with DTR (DisConnMode=80), or
•     disconnect with EOT (^D) (DisConnMode=60), or
•     have the network peer drop the TCP connection, or
•     reboot the device server.

[Originally Published On: 01/08/2010 08:52 AM]