While following recent events between Estonia and Russia and related DDoS attacks I was thinking how to reach a server under such situation. The server could be far away physically and due the attack it is not reachable through public Internet. Also there is nobody to sent out to access that server locally - what to do?

Then I remembered modems. I do not mean cable modems but those old analog modems for normal telephone lines. Analog modems were used to connect dial-up services like BBSes and Internet providers. The great thing with those old modems is that they can be utilized to create point-to-point connection without being dependent on Internet. Of course one could use more advanced technology to set up such but analog land lines or suitable mobile phones can be found everywhere and most laptops have analog modem still available.

The speed of V.90/56k modem should be more than enough for terminal access and that is sufficient for administrator to check situation on the server side. It is not really pleasant to send big patches over such connection but changing configurations is possible and most likely that is the way to solve a problem. It would be fun to know how many server administrators have such setup as a plan C ...