The History of a Terminal Switch

Starting sometime in the early 1990s, many companies started to implement and use a device known as a terminal switch or terminal server in an effort to transport printer and terminal information to a specific vendor network.  With this newfound technology, companies had the ability to increase their productivity and their network stability.  Then came the more advanced components of flash memory and the older units soon became obsolete.  Today these switches are extremely sophisticated and capable of supporting numerous devices and machines provide for RAW TCP type socket connections, and these switches have brought about the practice of something called in band or console management.

As far back as the 1980s, there was a practice known simply as out-of-band management or lights out management and it was emerging as a response to the newly created networks for data transmissions.  This ability, of being able to control various devices and machines on a network which has been turned off, or has an operating system that is not available, is extremely important from the standpoint of a troubleshooting and maintenance perspective.  This practice necessitates having a channel dedicated for machine maintenance.  Many IT professionals are now able to boot up machines by using a good image file, update software or firmware after hours, run repair utilities, and many other tasks.



As computers became more advanced, the more business came to rely on them in order to do increasingly greater parts of their everyday activities.  Information such as employee wages, work histories, work assignments, and the data used in order to perform many jobs all started to become computerized.  Any corporation which utilized a customer call center for their customer service, order placing, order tracking and many administrative purposes became to move to completely computerized record management systems for their customer records which required loads of software and hardware.  While these changes certainly made the large companies more efficient, the maintenance needed for these networks became vital to their success.  Certain hardware, such as the terminal switch is necessary for many management activities of the network administrators.

Today, the application for this kind of hardware includes management of very large server farms.  These are dense facilities which are filled with servers that can literally store information worth billions of terabytes which can then be accessed simply by using a console server.  Employee and client information will often be stored at an off sight location, but IT departments and others within the company must have quick access to this information as well as the necessity of being able to keep it secure.  As an example, many law, accounting and tax firms will sometimes utilize a third party company to store huge amounts of data regarding their respective clients.  With the use of the console server or a device that is similar it is possible to manage this data remotely one single physical location.


The management of huge computer networks securely and quickly is now considered an industry standard for commercial interests.  A company that does not have this capability is at an extreme disadvantage when it comes to volume and productivity.  The maintenance of a network is certainly not an easy task and having hardware like the terminal switch enables the IT professionals the ability to access any machine that is plugged in to the network regardless if it is reachable or unreachable.