I noticed this feature of the Ascends, and I must confess that it
was one of the best things I saw about it. It didn't help me as an
Ascend-newbie configure the box, but I can really see how it would
be marvelous in two cases:
1 - you've had the box long enough to grok it and want an easier
configuration method or a backup -- very very good, or:
2 - you're installing your third (or higher) Ascend.
pmreadconf and pmconsole are great for backup, but not as great
for initial configuration.
We've run in to this same wall with the Portmasters. We do have
an expect script which configures the PMs for us, so the setup time is
about the same, but it was kind of a hassle to have to develop our own
solution to the problem. The sending isn't the problem - being
able to back up the current configuration of the portmaster in to
a textfile would be a godsend, and I know I'm not the only one who
feels this way. (Anyone listening? :)
Configuring the Ascend did make me appreciate several of their
features. They've got a good, solid product that would function well
when you need a ton of them - the alarm notification, advanced SNMP
support, and oodles and oodles of protocols and options could
potentially make life nice. But at the same time, going in to
the Ethernet configuration to tell the box that it's supposed to use
RADIUS is a bit odd.
I'm tempted to codify this in to a wishlist and submit them as
RFEs.
-Dave