Versatility and scalability are RAS 1500's hallmarks. The base unit controls the stackable hubs, which appear as a single unit in the Transcend Remote Access Manager (TRAM) management application. The stack is so versatile, 3Com claims, you can remove and insert a slice from the middle of a stack without disturbing the rest of the product. This capability should prove to be an excellent feature when you must replace a unit.

Mixing It Up RAS 1500's base unit and expansion slots (slices) accommodate eight ports across two I/O slots. You can fill the I/O slots with a four-port V.34/ V.Everything asynchronous card or a two-port Universal Connect Digital ISDN BRI card. The V.34/ V.Everything board connects to the phone line via RJ-11. The ISDN-BRI card uses ISDN "U" interface and leverages 3Com's I-Modem technology to intelligently switch calls to the V.34/ V.Everything modems, V.90 modems or ISDN. This technology lets you make the most of your dial pool. Rather than maintaining separate numbers for analog and digital calls, ISDN and V.90, you can use one phone number in a hunt group to terminate all calls.

I tested RAS 1500 with Midnight Networks' Avalanche/RA remote-access testing tool and found the performance acceptable. I used V.34 modem calls for both the V.34/V.Everything card and the I-Modem cards. With the exception of capping our client modems at 28.8 Kbps because of a bug in the I-Modem--this bug will be fixed by the release date--the modem and ISDN calls connected to the same port without a hitch.

A Port Is a Port RAS 1500 has utilities for users who are comfortable with command lines and GUIs. Most of the configuration occurs during boot up. The TRAM wizard walks you through RAS 1500's initial configuration. Although I tested a prebeta version of TRAM, I was able to read the status of the RAS 1500 and its individual ports.

Typically, smaller remote-access servers write their configurations to files, which the operating system must reread. With RAS 1500, configuration is set through SNMP, and configuration changes, except for those on the modems, take effect immediately.

If you are more comfortable with the command line, the interface offers command completion, command history and context-sensitive syntax help. Configuring and managing RAS 1500 via the command line was fairly simple. You don't have to manipulate any RAS 1500 hardware.

RAS 1500 offers decent PPP tracing facilities, but lacks in-depth logging of ISDN Q.931 and ISDN Q.921. Logging and reporting is performed via SNMP, syslog and RADIUS (Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service).

Mike Fratto can be reached at mfratto@nwc.com.