KVM over IP Module
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5. Usage
5.1 Prerequisites
The IP-KVM switch features an embedded operating system and applications offering
a variety of standardized interfaces. This chapter will describe both these interfaces,
and the way to use them in a more detailed manner. The interfaces are accessed
using the TCP/IP protocol family, thus they can be accessed using the LAN port of the
device.
The following interfaces are supported:
HTTP/HTTPS
Full access is provided by the embedded web server. The IP-KVM switch
environment can be entirely managed using a standard web browser. You can
access the IP-KVM switch using the insecure HTTP protocol, or using the
encrypted HTTPS protocol. Whenever possible, use HTTPS.
Telnet
A standard Telnet client can be used to access an arbitrary device connected to
the IP-KVM switch's serial port via a terminal mode.
The primary interface of the IP-KVM switch is the HTTP interface. This is covered
extensively in this chapter. Other interfaces are addressed in subtopics.
In order to use the Remote Console window of your managed host system, the
browser has to come with a Java Runtime Environment version 1.4.2 or above. If the
browser has no Java support (such as on a small handheld device), you are still able
to maintain your IP-KVM switch using the administration forms displayed by the
browser itself.
Important:
We recommend installing a Sun JVM 1.5.0.4.
For an insecure connection to the IP-KVM switch, we can recommend the following
browsers:
• Microsoft Internet Explorer version 6.0 or higher on Windows 2000 and Windows XP
• Netscape Navigator 7.0 or Mozilla 1.6 on Windows 2000, Windows XP, Unix, Linux
and UNIX-like Operating Systems
In order to access the remote host system using a securely encrypted connection, you
need a browser that supports the HTTPS protocol. Strong security is only assured by
using a key length of 128 Bit. Some of the old browsers do not have a strong 128 Bit
encryption algorithm.
Using the Internet Explorer, open the menu entry “?” and “Info” to read about the key
length that is currently activated. The dialog box contains a link that leads you to
information on how to upgrade your browser to a state of the art encryption scheme.
Figure 5-1 shows the dialog box presented by the Internet Explorer 6.0.
