The official list price for a raspberry Pi Zero W is $10 from the manufacturer. It is mostly driven by hardware that is already present on the Raspberry Pi but does require a few external components. This is a great project for a network engineer who wants to do a project with a raspberry Pi that does not want to use solder or a breadboard. I was able to save a few dollars and get some cool geek points in the process. In this article, I am going to show how I was able to build a wireless console server with Raspberry Pi Zero W for about $50. While this is a good solution, it comes with a price tag of $80 (at the time of this post) for the standard model and $130 for the pro model. One of the most popular solutions available today is a product called Air Console which is a ready made solution for this purpose. Connect directly from your smart phone (removing the need for a laptop altogether) Connect to the WCS from a more comfortable location nearby (like a table where you can rest your laptop)Ģ. Instead of having to connect the laptop directly to the serial port of the device, we connect to the WCS and access it remotely through Wi-Fi.
Wireless Console ServerĪ wireless console server (WCS) is a device that allows us to access the serial interface of a device over a network connection. Fortunately, this problem is solved via the use of a wireless console server. During such stressful times, it has been helpful to be able to access the network device in short order without having a fish for console cables and my laptop. While the above scenario intended to be a bit of an exaggeration, it is loosely adapted from my real life experience helping customers with the installation and troubleshooting of network devices. If only there was some helpful tool to remotely access the network device within a comfortable vicinity so I can focus more on getting the device online… After making the correct guess on baud settings, we get access to the device’s CLI but we have to stand with the laptop in one hand while we painstakingly type with the other hand, commands to diagnose the problem. We rummage through our bag to try to find our USB to Serial cable, connect it to the laptop and launch our terminal program so we can guess the correct baud settings to establish connectivity. Our only option at that point in time to try to diagnose the problem is by connecting to the console (serial) port of that device and access it by its command line interface (CLI). Is it the upstream provider router? Is it the firewall rule change? Who knows? We immediately go scramble to the datacenter, data closet or whatever that network device lives and immediately start looking for the cause of the problem.
There is nothing more terrifying to a network/security engineer than getting a notification that your router/firewall is no longer accessible from the network. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Disclaimer: This is an affiliate link post.
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