Also known as
CDU, the
Cisco Dialout Utility was a
*free* program available from Cisco's
website. With CDU and a properly configured Cisco
NAS, your
modem-less
Windows 3.1/
Windows 95 or
Windows NT workstation can use apps like
Hyperterminal to connect via
modem to other modems. How? By using a
serial-over-
telnet protocol (defined in RFC 2217, I believe), CDU can emulate a
serial port and redirect it's commands via
telnet on port 7100 to one of the
NAS's rotary groups. A rotary group, very simplified, is an interface within the
nas that's in charge of handling how things make outbound calls.
Sounds
really neat huh? Don't get your hopes up, as Cisco decided to
discontinue it over a year ago. A reason was posted, to the effect that with the popularity of the
Internet,
WANs and
VPN's dialing things via modem isn't required anymore. Personally I think they did it so that you'd get to buy a solution from another company that Cisco is getting paid to develop products for. But then that's just me. Yet there's already a few such products out there, many coincidentally fine-tuned to work with Cisco equipment.