24 year Cisco employee here. I supported the 7200's in the early to mid 2000's as part of the San Jose TAC escalation team. Internally VXR stood for Voice eXchange Router. The source of that was an internal document that I can not share (sorry). You might be asking what Voice eXchange Router meant, well the midplane is more advanced than just being higher bandwidth, it has support for switching DS-0 timeslots across the midplane to each port adapter. The press release for the VXR (can still be found online) and it states, "In addition, the VXR midplane includes a Multiservice Interchange (MIX), which supports switching of DS-0 time slots via MIX interconnects across the midplane to each port adapter slot. The MIX in the Cisco 7200 VXR provides the ability to switch DS-0 time slots between multichannel T1 and E1 interfaces, much like a digital cross connect or an add-drop multiplexer. In the future, this will enable the Cisco 7200 VXR to switch DS-0 voice channels on a T1/E1 interface on one port adapter to and from a separate voice processing port adapter. It will also enable DS-0's to be switched through the Cisco 7200 VXR without any processing, a requirement in certain voice configurations."
I just remembered I have a 7206 VXR midplane on my shelf. According to a handwritten tag still on it, it was a "Gold Board" that was down rev'd. The engineering on that board was pretty amazing. The board itself is 3.5 mm thick and looks to have between 6 and 8 layers - but my eyesight isn't great these days so I could be wrong on this. The midplane was built like a tank, it is heavier than it looks. When you pick it up the weight is a bit surprising. The alignment of the I/O controller and NPE/NSE cards is pretty critical because there are so many pins, the connector design actually handles the alignment with guides built right into the connectors. My recollection is that the 7206 mid-plane has 6 pci to pci bridges, one for each port adapter.
Very cool, thanks for all the info! I had a hunch that one of the names with "voice" in it might be the right one because of that press release. Very awesome to hear it from the source. Eventually I'll get one of these apart (which doesn't seem easy) and be able to have a look at a midplane in person. I think it'll be the VXR, one of it's fans is starting to develop some bearing noise. Thanks for watching and commenting!
@@mtimmsj Oh, hey, guess that means I am okay to share some of it now! (Ain't no NDA like a Cisco NDA.) I'm one of the *externals* who got to see that document. Specifically the one that had the GSM MICAs and pre-NPE4. No, not the VOXD's. The non-public ones that limited you to a single PRI for the whole chassis. The VXR doesn't have a 6x6 though; it's actually a 2x3 64/50MHz or 2x3 64/66MHz, which is why the port budget must be so strictly adhered to. It's only ever mentioned in the NPE-G1 documentation though (and some non-public stuff with the uBRs, IIRC.)
Ping success rate of 80% for your tftp server occurs because the first ping request goes through arp resolution to know the l2 next hop. Once arp resolves the other 4 requests get responses and are successful resulting in a 4/5 success rate or 80%.
These are very good routers. As a network engineer I scream internally seeing them in an enterprise environment. They do still pop up in closets rarely in extremely neglected networks. I love seeing them taken up by collectors though. They are truly a part of networking history.
Last time I worked with them was in 2012, we were decommissioning most of them and replacing them with ASR1K, a few were just getting RAM upgrades to keep them running until we could get an ASR1K in their place. It was not unusual to find units with uptimes over 5 years, scary stuff! Reloading units that old was always a gamble, sometimes they never booted again. Honestly, they gave me so many headaches back then that I do not miss them, but they were a solid, reliable platform.
@@ricsip The normal thing - i wants things to be less than 3 years .... but then we are gonna have to start planning the replacement as soon as the device is connected in our network ....
Came here to say the same thing. As soon as I saw his topology I thought "oh a simple static route would do nicely here for routing" and I also assumed it would be in line with his other networking knowledge (which is well beyond your average IT person, but less than a CCNA for example). But no, he goes straight for a dynamic routing protocol RIPv2, well impressed! We still have to study RIP in college while doing networking (I did 2 years ago). We still need to learn about a lot of out of date or obsolete protocols and technology from the era in the video, because it's important for context and to then better understand what came after.
LOL -- RIP is like the proof-of-concept routing protocol. Nobody ever uses it, because there's always a better option. But it's probably the first protocol the developers built on a new routing platform just to test functionality of the entire stack. It would be handed to an intern as a training mission. :-)
"So I got this VXR because I saw it in Clabretro's video" Don't get me started on how much watching your videos costs me. I now own almost a whole server rack of ancient Cisco (and related) stuff because of you.
This was fun and frustrating to watch! Only because I couldn't tell you how to fix some of the problems you ran into! I still work a lot with T1/ISDN based technology with phone systems that use PRIs. You should consider getting an older PBX for your house to learn and play with, I think you'd enjoy it. Feel free to reach out to me if you want recommendations.
If you want pbx that still has modern support I would suggest dialogic D41 boards which can be had from 16 bit ISA to PCIExpress. PCIE only support chaining 4 8port T1 cards (even though their link cable has 6 positions) but a past employeer filled the pci and isa versions in 23 slot induustrial chassis. So each phone switch supported 44 T1 circuits. We had call center customers with close to 100 individual T1s into 3 systems. The dialogic boards multiplex 2 T1 into a single 8C jack and give you dongles, but if you have a 5e panel kicking around you can wire it up to do the conversion in a more stable way that is easier to troubleshoot and manage.
@@clabretro dangerous rabbit hole to go down is watching The Nortel Guy on here. Sort by most viewed first.
6 місяців тому+2
I still got a more recent Dialogic Card laying around (4xBRI) with absolutely no computer to plug it in, but I really enjoyed working with those so maybe I'll do a retro ISDN setup sometime...
As a network engineer who used to have four of these as lab fodder, seeing this series is my Cocomelon. Looking forward to seeing all of these old WAN/LAN technologies. I entered the industry too late to have to configure most of this stuff in production environments.
In 2005 I had an internship at the Cisco TAC facility in RTP working in "Customer Advocacy Lab Operations", which meant we spent all day, every day doing "network recreations": when a Cisco support engineer couldn't solve a customer's problem, they called our group of 19 year-olds to build a scale model of it in our datacenter. We had racks on wheels holding hundreds of line modules, interface cards, router engines, hardware upgrades, power supplies, and on and on and on, every Cisco SKU that was currently supported was either racked up and powered by the dozen, or available to pull from storage. Anyway thanks for triggering a ton of flashbacks; apparently there are still parts of my brain fully dedicated to memorizing Cisco VXR hardware compatibility matrices and old-school Cisco IOS configuration commands.
The config issue could be that the config-register is set to 0x2142 instead of 0x2102 so show version and down the bottom you will see the config register value - in conf t run: config-register 0x2102 to change it.
@@clabretroYep, setting them to 2142 is actually a method for password recovery on older cisco gear. You interupt the boot, fall into ROMMON, set it to 2142 (Instead of 2102), reset, boot into full IOS, enable, then copy start run.
Thanks for the mention, I really appreciate it! In terms of the syslog messages getting in the way of your typing, go to "line con 0" in the configuration, and enable "logging synchronous". This makes it print a newline followed by whatever you had already typed at the prompt after the syslog message shows. Also yeah double check your "config-register" and make sure it's set to 0x2102, if it's set to another value it is likely set to startup with a default configuration regardless of what's stored in flash. I'm really curious to see when you get around to having a Token Ring network running on these, have a PA-4R though I have the same issue that you have at 23:38 whenever it's in the router. Not sure if it's a compatibility issue or a hardware issue, but either way it'd be great to get some old equipment working that require that type of connection. These routers will also do voice switching on those T1 controllers, alongside running CME if you wanted to experiment with the older 7940/7960 VoIP phones.
Thanks for the config tips, figured there was no way people just put up with that ha. And I think you're right about the register, gonna mess around with that next time I fire them up. I'll have to try that ATM-CES board in the 7206 since it has a different boot rom version, that might give us some clues. Surprising you have that issue with a PA-4R, figured that'd be a pretty widely-supported card. I'll definitely be building up a token ring setup after I acquire a bit more gear for it.
heads up good practice is to use “wr mem” or “write memory” to write to NVRAM memory, as you can also use “write line” to show you the unsaved running config where “show conf” shows you the saved startup configuration. Cisco made this easier with “running-config” and “startup-config” in later versions, but you may come across older versions that don’t support it.
i think that while backing up the running config to a tftp server is technically more correct, doing 'show run', selecting the whole listing, copy pasting into a text document is way easier and faster. That's how we were taught for CCNA and Net+
I'm loving this networking content. As a young nerd it's really cool to actually watch legacy equipment videos like this. Also, I'm seeing you forget to exit configuration terminal before executing commands, thus getting some errors. If you prepend the command with "do" like "Router(config-if)# do show ip int brief" it will work with no need of exiting the terminal. Hope this helps!
For 35:50 there are a couple of different things you can do: if you still want log messages but not to have them break up your commands, use "logging synchronous" under the line con 0 section. If you want the log messages to stop altogether, "no logging console" under global config should work. I never worked on a 7200 myself so I'm hoping those commands aren't too new.
43:12 The reason you get an 80 percent success rate is because the router has to perform an ARP request to translate the IP address into the MAC address. During this time, the first ping packet times out. If you were to immediately issue another ping, all 5 packets would succeed because the ARP table is now populated!
You beat me to it. I agree. This behavior seems to happen most often with old routers running IOS. You don't see this if you ping from a linux VM. Perhaps IOS is slow to process the ARP reply and the Echo request times out before it does.
You were on the right track with the lack of connectivity between your lab network and your home network. You had a route from the the lab network to you home network via RIP but your home network had no route to send data back. Dynamic routing support is virtually non-existent for Ubiquiti hardware so the only real option would be to enable NAT on the Cisco with the T1 interface as the inside and the connection to your home network as the outside.
This video again was a travel into the past for me. ATM was very popular as WAN connection in the 2000s in europe, especially in germany. The double width PA was completly new to me. I have never seen them before.
3:24 Oh man, i miss my home network setup back in the day (circa 2000´s)using an IBM 8228 Token Ring MAU with my desktop, my server and my laptop.....good times of a great learning experience...
That aux port should be just another serial console port which you'd hook a dial-up modem for "offline" remote console access. They're not all too common in my world these days, but I still have a few pieces of critical equipment in my DC with 56k modems for "back door access" to. Beyond that... despite the fact that we have multiple 10Gb circuits from network providers into my building in 2024, we still have legacy T1 and T3 shelves that are active and in use. The fact that so much legacy stuff lingers about so long still to this day blows my mind. Thanks Caleb, this channel is the most fun on youtube right now. The antique tech stuff you uncover and learn / play with is just great.
We had 3 7206VXR's at work that used to do the WAN connectivity. They got retired in like 2015 I think. All 3 had the NPE-G2s. I got inspired and tried to fire them up. Unfortunately, one of the Chassis's has a bad fan and a Dead NPE-G2. But I'm building out a lab at work with the remaining two. We had a Cisco 2951 as the core router, but I can get it pegged at 100% cpu pretty easily so the VXR's should be an improvement!
This brings back memories. You could put the good SUP in them and run MPLS on them. We used 7200's to terminate tons of channelized DS3s to serve T1s to customers. Fun times and tons of BERT tests.
Prior employer, we used lots of these early 2000's as Customer Edge (CE) routers on MPLS networks, with either E3 PA's or the Sonet/SDH PA's, with a beefier NPE for the higher bandwidths. VXR I always though was voice related as they had the T1/E1 digital voice with DSP PA's so you could use the 7200 as a large voice gateway for a Call Mangler solution.
In fact, you do want to use smaller subnets on the 10.0.0.0/8 range, it allows much more efficient use of address space, which is exactly what subnetting is all about. Pretty much the only maths you need to remember in networking is 2^n and 2^n-2, where n is the number of bits in your subnet/host range. So for your /24 subnet, that's 8 bits for the hosts, so 2^8 means 256 IP addresses, and 2^8-2 means 254 usable IP addresses since the first and last addresses are unusable (subnet and broadcast addresses). That allows for 2^16 subnets (i.e. 10.0.0.0/24 to 10.255.255.0/24), or 65536 subnets. That's a lot of subnets, but depending on the way you carve them up, they can be used up pretty quickly in a large organisation. So on a point-to-point link, you only really need two IP addresses, and while a /31 would provide one bit or 2^1=2 host addresses, both are unusable since you still need a subnet address and broadcast address, so you really need a /30 for 2^2-2=2 host addresses. That being said, a /24 is fine for a point-to-point link in the lab, it's not best practice, but it'll work just fine as you saw. However if you are planning on doing certifications, you really should be practising subnetting so you can work out the numbers quickly. Back when I was at uni, I practised it so much, when I sat for our 1.5 hour subnetting exam, I had it finished in
The reason the chassis is the same size for 4 or 6 slot (aside from cost saving for using the same case like you said) is probably because it making it smaller wouldn't change it from a 3U to a 2U, and it's a sin to not follow the size conventions in corporate gear!
Excellent video! A lot of the stuff went over my head as a networking and homelab noob, but it has given me a lot of stuff to research out of curiosity haha. Love the content!
You could have a play with BGP, getting it going at a basic level is quite simple but then it allows for a lot of flexibility if you start adding in route maps etc for filtering/messing with the inputs/outputs of the routing tables
On the hot insertion. If you look at the midplane connector you'll see that the pins are different length. That allows the power grounds to be atrached before the data or hot power pins which prevents power surging in the device. Some, notably IBM server chassis can turn off the power to a card or ram slot allowing its removal and replacement if cable management was used. Part of the cost is this extra power manangement designed into the custom connector.
Kind of; I don't know the specifics but one company I work with had VXRs that were old technology and being replaced with the ONS line. By the time I had started to get my footing and learn the network, the ASR 9000 line were the newest thing and they were working on moving some of the network to them. Nowadays one client is using ASRs, one is using a mix of ASRs and NCSes. I think one of the clients still had VXRs(?) for their OADM tandem voice stuff, but it's in the process of being decommissioned.
Sun Microsystems used RIP heavily in the 90s. Even is the mid/late 90s. Well at least in the ENG domain. The only time I saw RIPv2 was CBS in the early 2000s
Good thing you used the word "typically" because you can configure VLANs on ports such as Ethernet ports, and route between these two virtual interfaces, but all traffic is only flowing through one cable. 🤯
Yes dude, it is super annoying hahahaha.... When messing with my Cisco gear over console, it's annoying, those automatic messages. Ssh/telnet doesn't have this issue
Check your config register value (e.g. in "show ver"), it migt be set to ignore the config on boot. You'll want it to be 0x2102 (0x2142 tells it to ignore the stored config). You can change it through "config t" and then I think its "config-register 0x2102". You can verify that the configuration is there on boot with a "show start".
So, at 34:49 when you're talking about live commands, it doesn't show up over SSH. Generally the console interface is treated more as a resource of last resort, so it all prints debugging info for troubleshooting. You can turn it off completely with "no logging console" or limit it to "logging console " which can be emergencies, alerts, critical, errors, warnings, notifications, information, or debugging. And, as other folks have mentioned, ATM still exists for a lot of telco stuff and ISP fiber sometime and stuff. GPON uses Ethernet for data and ATM for voice.
35:41 - getting the log messages interrupting you while writing commands. You can stop this by doing the "logging synchronous" command on your console line. Like this: Router>enable Router#configure terminal Router(config)#line console 0 Router(config-line)#logging synchronous Router(config-line)#end That will stop those annoying logs getting in the way. You can also apply this to the VTY lines (which are used for telnet and ssh connections) by using the above commands but with "Router(config)#line vty 0 4" or "Router(config)#line vty 0 15" depending on how many lines (don't know on routers as old as the 7200s).
ATM not much used in the US I do t think but I think in other less developed areas of the world. Used circuit switching protocols instead of packet switched. Supposedly more reliable when routing over unreliable networks/providers. I think the gist was that many independent virtual circuits were created and traffic was sent over each of those circuits asynchronously which could span any number of providers and networks and recombined at the other end.
It was very used in wan connections that were not vpn because they didn't traverse the internet. It was nothing a computer jockey would ever run into. Banks, Industrial and government systems. think unpowered/dark fiber point2point links that didn't interact with a switched telephone network.
you need to use the “logging synchronous” command to have the console messages wait, or “no logging console” to turn off console logging. If you’re telneted or sshed into a vty line you can turn the messages on and off with “terminal monitor” and “terminal no monitor”
if you are using /24 thats Classless routing. That is the reason the standard moved away from classed routing Mixing the terms will cause confusion. A /24 is where it is sure you dont need the address space, but it 100% doesnt matter. Using a 10 network between the 192 networks is good practice because it reminds you that you are changing domains/networks. it makes the routing rules visually distinct and much easier to troubleshoot.
OMG,BURN the ATM PA! ATM wasn't really much of a competitor for ethernet, more of the "new evolution of frame relay". ATM is garbage. There's a reason you haven't heard much about it.
Look into "config-registers" for your troubles regarding saving the config. I think the solution might be: conf t config-register 0x2102 end wr reload Edit: Comment was made before your outro ;)
I believe that that dual width card might be for emulating T1's over ATM. One of the things that ATM could do well before it was possible over IP/Ethernet was Time Division Multiplexing Circuit Emulation
Never seen 4 slots for SD ram before until now.... But that was more when I was digging into desktops supporting windows 98, 2000 & early release of XP.
In my experience, EIGRP (and if inter-vender-ops are required OSPF) are just as easy to configure as RIP, but they allow CIDR routing, and converge much faster.
You can create crossover cables pretty easily. One end is T568A and the other end is T568B. Voila! But I know you just want to put all of those switches to use :P
That only works for 10/100 ethernet. If you tried that pinout on a Gigabit switch that doesn't supoort mdix it still wouldn't work because gig uses all 4 pairs. On any device that supports mdix you don't need a crossover at all. That generation of cisco gear it was hit or miss if it supported mdix and the pinout for a gig crosover never had a standard since in addition to swapping pairs 1&3, you also need to swap pairs 2&4.
@@RowanHawkins Honestly forgot about that, but you're totally right, of course! I was always under the impression that Gigabit Ethernet required auto MDI-X, but it may have just been an option that almost everyone ended up using.
That is interesting since the Intel 82543GC is a gigE controller, even though this board has none. I would wonder if it's used internally on the backplane somewhere, but the 7200-series backplane is actually PCI so that wouldn't make sense. This C7200-I/O-2FE/E in this video only has 2x10/100 ports, while the C7200-I/O-GE+E does have the gigabit port.
BTW: If you want to stop the issue your were having @ 35:40 with the console; running the "logging synchronous" for "line con 0" under global config works. Router(config)# line con 0 Router(config-line)# logging synchronous
Obviously you solved things, but the simplest would have been to start with static IP and gateway on each PC, and a single static default route on each router pointing at each other's T1. Static is simplest at first.
"list price" - LOL - no one paid list price. I worked for a carrier who had one of the highest discounts at that time - 70% - so we paid 30% of those list prices..... Most of our PE routers where 7200 VXRs.. A whole lot ATM stuff.. I still have a Cisco 3620 with an 155M ATM card. Here in Europe we also go a few more bytes out of the serial interfaces as E1's here where 2 Mbit/s and E3 was 45 Mbit/s..
$9,000 in 1998 is still expensive in my book 😆 But yeah that's why I always mention "list price" -- it's usually the only accurately-documented numbers you can find but of course businesses wouldn't be paying that especially if they're buying at large volume.
Super cool stuff! Loved the video as always. I wonder if it’s possible to dump the development bootloader (if it’s of any importance). You’ve got quite the setup down there now lol. I was just about as excited as you were when you loaded into the map in Half Life 🤣
@@clabretro i deduced that basically 10 years ago while trying to compare 1989 Ethernet (with AUI) with current today 1(0)G fiber. AUI used because it WOULD HAVE been A REAL hassle doing a vampire connection in the rear of a computer.... Somewhere in all devices (at least wired things) there must be something like MII.
If you are able to make your own T1 cables, why not make cross-over cables yourself? However, I really like this videos and it is refreshing that there is not a Cisco network engineer with 20 years experience doing it, but someone who does step by step learning. It is really about understanding how networks work, from the pin out of the cable up to network routing and running services.
24 year Cisco employee here. I supported the 7200's in the early to mid 2000's as part of the San Jose TAC escalation team. Internally VXR stood for Voice eXchange Router. The source of that was an internal document that I can not share (sorry). You might be asking what Voice eXchange Router meant, well the midplane is more advanced than just being higher bandwidth, it has support for switching DS-0 timeslots across the midplane to each port adapter. The press release for the VXR (can still be found online) and it states, "In addition, the VXR midplane includes a Multiservice Interchange (MIX), which supports switching of DS-0 time slots via MIX interconnects across the midplane to each port adapter slot. The MIX in the Cisco 7200 VXR provides the ability to switch DS-0 time slots between multichannel T1 and E1 interfaces, much like a digital cross connect or an add-drop multiplexer. In the future, this will enable the Cisco 7200 VXR to switch DS-0 voice channels on a T1/E1 interface on one port adapter to and from a separate voice processing port adapter. It will also enable DS-0's to be switched through the Cisco 7200 VXR without any processing, a requirement in certain voice configurations."
I just remembered I have a 7206 VXR midplane on my shelf. According to a handwritten tag still on it, it was a "Gold Board" that was down rev'd.
The engineering on that board was pretty amazing. The board itself is 3.5 mm thick and looks to have between 6 and 8 layers - but my eyesight isn't great these days so I could be wrong on this. The midplane was built like a tank, it is heavier than it looks. When you pick it up the weight is a bit surprising. The alignment of the I/O controller and NPE/NSE cards is pretty critical because there are so many pins, the connector design actually handles the alignment with guides built right into the connectors. My recollection is that the 7206 mid-plane has 6 pci to pci bridges, one for each port adapter.
Very cool, thanks for all the info! I had a hunch that one of the names with "voice" in it might be the right one because of that press release. Very awesome to hear it from the source. Eventually I'll get one of these apart (which doesn't seem easy) and be able to have a look at a midplane in person. I think it'll be the VXR, one of it's fans is starting to develop some bearing noise. Thanks for watching and commenting!
@@mtimmsj Oh, hey, guess that means I am okay to share some of it now! (Ain't no NDA like a Cisco NDA.) I'm one of the *externals* who got to see that document. Specifically the one that had the GSM MICAs and pre-NPE4. No, not the VOXD's. The non-public ones that limited you to a single PRI for the whole chassis. The VXR doesn't have a 6x6 though; it's actually a 2x3 64/50MHz or 2x3 64/66MHz, which is why the port budget must be so strictly adhered to. It's only ever mentioned in the NPE-G1 documentation though (and some non-public stuff with the uBRs, IIRC.)
@@mtimmsjI still have one left still in use at work and old ass 6509 switches.
i read all of that twice and I have no idea what it means, but I saved it as an excellent example of tech lingo
Ping success rate of 80% for your tftp server occurs because the first ping request goes through arp resolution to know the l2 next hop. Once arp resolves the other 4 requests get responses and are successful resulting in a 4/5 success rate or 80%.
ah makes sense!
Yupp! That's why any subsequent pings will be 5/5.
These are very good routers. As a network engineer I scream internally seeing them in an enterprise environment. They do still pop up in closets rarely in extremely neglected networks. I love seeing them taken up by collectors though. They are truly a part of networking history.
Oh and regarding the comment of received messages you can do a "no logging console" in global configuration mode to stop that.
@@SoundOfWaveformor “logging synchronous” to make it not break up the line you’re typing
Last time I worked with them was in 2012, we were decommissioning most of them and replacing them with ASR1K, a few were just getting RAM upgrades to keep them running until we could get an ASR1K in their place. It was not unusual to find units with uptimes over 5 years, scary stuff! Reloading units that old was always a gamble, sometimes they never booted again. Honestly, they gave me so many headaches back then that I do not miss them, but they were a solid, reliable platform.
@@acorredorv you just literally said that they were stable and reliable. Then why did you have headache about them?
@@ricsip The normal thing - i wants things to be less than 3 years .... but then we are gonna have to start planning the replacement as soon as the device is connected in our network ....
Omg just jumped into RIP instead of using a static routing statement. Legend. 🤣
😆
First time I ever saw RIP in use. Always wondered who the heck used it LOL
Came here to say the same thing. As soon as I saw his topology I thought "oh a simple static route would do nicely here for routing" and I also assumed it would be in line with his other networking knowledge (which is well beyond your average IT person, but less than a CCNA for example). But no, he goes straight for a dynamic routing protocol RIPv2, well impressed! We still have to study RIP in college while doing networking (I did 2 years ago). We still need to learn about a lot of out of date or obsolete protocols and technology from the era in the video, because it's important for context and to then better understand what came after.
LOL -- RIP is like the proof-of-concept routing protocol. Nobody ever uses it, because there's always a better option. But it's probably the first protocol the developers built on a new routing platform just to test functionality of the entire stack. It would be handed to an intern as a training mission. :-)
"So I got this VXR because I saw it in Clabretro's video" Don't get me started on how much watching your videos costs me. I now own almost a whole server rack of ancient Cisco (and related) stuff because of you.
beautiful
I genuinely said "yes!" in public when i saw this video posted 😆
😂😂
This was fun and frustrating to watch! Only because I couldn't tell you how to fix some of the problems you ran into! I still work a lot with T1/ISDN based technology with phone systems that use PRIs. You should consider getting an older PBX for your house to learn and play with, I think you'd enjoy it. Feel free to reach out to me if you want recommendations.
haha I figured it'd be that way. PBX is on the list!
I was late with my comment.. @423tech beat me to it. Def get a PBX!
If you want pbx that still has modern support I would suggest dialogic D41 boards which can be had from 16 bit ISA to PCIExpress. PCIE only support chaining 4 8port T1 cards (even though their link cable has 6 positions) but a past employeer filled the pci and isa versions in 23 slot induustrial chassis. So each phone switch supported 44 T1 circuits. We had call center customers with close to 100 individual T1s into 3 systems. The dialogic boards multiplex 2 T1 into a single 8C jack and give you dongles, but if you have a 5e panel kicking around you can wire it up to do the conversion in a more stable way that is easier to troubleshoot and manage.
@@clabretro dangerous rabbit hole to go down is watching The Nortel Guy on here. Sort by most viewed first.
I still got a more recent Dialogic Card laying around (4xBRI) with absolutely no computer to plug it in, but I really enjoyed working with those so maybe I'll do a retro ISDN setup sometime...
I have like 50 of these in a storage room, i cannot believe people are so interested in this lmao. Congrats man.
As a network engineer who used to have four of these as lab fodder, seeing this series is my Cocomelon. Looking forward to seeing all of these old WAN/LAN technologies. I entered the industry too late to have to configure most of this stuff in production environments.
In 2005 I had an internship at the Cisco TAC facility in RTP working in "Customer Advocacy Lab Operations", which meant we spent all day, every day doing "network recreations": when a Cisco support engineer couldn't solve a customer's problem, they called our group of 19 year-olds to build a scale model of it in our datacenter. We had racks on wheels holding hundreds of line modules, interface cards, router engines, hardware upgrades, power supplies, and on and on and on, every Cisco SKU that was currently supported was either racked up and powered by the dozen, or available to pull from storage. Anyway thanks for triggering a ton of flashbacks; apparently there are still parts of my brain fully dedicated to memorizing Cisco VXR hardware compatibility matrices and old-school Cisco IOS configuration commands.
very cool!
That Cisco router was shipper to you in a Juniper box! Blasphemy! 😂
I know! How dare someone put Cisco dreg in a Juniper box! haha :-D
The config issue could be that the config-register is set to 0x2142 instead of 0x2102 so show version and down the bottom you will see the config register value - in conf t run: config-register 0x2102 to change it.
Probably when these were wiped the person didn't know the login so did trick to ignore the startup but forgot to set it back.
I just had a palm pilot app that let me decode the hash. cisco fixed that issue later on.
totally makes sense, I think you're right!
@@clabretroYep, setting them to 2142 is actually a method for password recovery on older cisco gear.
You interupt the boot, fall into ROMMON, set it to 2142 (Instead of 2102), reset, boot into full IOS, enable, then copy start run.
Thanks for the mention, I really appreciate it! In terms of the syslog messages getting in the way of your typing, go to "line con 0" in the configuration, and enable "logging synchronous". This makes it print a newline followed by whatever you had already typed at the prompt after the syslog message shows. Also yeah double check your "config-register" and make sure it's set to 0x2102, if it's set to another value it is likely set to startup with a default configuration regardless of what's stored in flash.
I'm really curious to see when you get around to having a Token Ring network running on these, have a PA-4R though I have the same issue that you have at 23:38 whenever it's in the router. Not sure if it's a compatibility issue or a hardware issue, but either way it'd be great to get some old equipment working that require that type of connection. These routers will also do voice switching on those T1 controllers, alongside running CME if you wanted to experiment with the older 7940/7960 VoIP phones.
Thanks for the config tips, figured there was no way people just put up with that ha. And I think you're right about the register, gonna mess around with that next time I fire them up.
I'll have to try that ATM-CES board in the 7206 since it has a different boot rom version, that might give us some clues. Surprising you have that issue with a PA-4R, figured that'd be a pretty widely-supported card. I'll definitely be building up a token ring setup after I acquire a bit more gear for it.
heads up good practice is to use “wr mem” or “write memory” to write to NVRAM memory, as you can also use “write line” to show you the unsaved running config where “show conf” shows you the saved startup configuration. Cisco made this easier with “running-config” and “startup-config” in later versions, but you may come across older versions that don’t support it.
i think that while backing up the running config to a tftp server is technically more correct, doing 'show run', selecting the whole listing, copy pasting into a text document is way easier and faster. That's how we were taught for CCNA and Net+
And VERY often creates something that can't be simply cut-n-paste back. (I've watched too many idiots fail over and over)
I'm loving this networking content. As a young nerd it's really cool to actually watch legacy equipment videos like this.
Also, I'm seeing you forget to exit configuration terminal before executing commands, thus getting some errors. If you prepend the command with "do" like "Router(config-if)# do show ip int brief" it will work with no need of exiting the terminal. Hope this helps!
thanks! I actually meant to mention in the video, whatever old versions of ios I've got those things don't appear to support "do" haha
I remember going to college around then and T1 was the fastest networking I had ever heard of. It was amazing.
For 35:50 there are a couple of different things you can do: if you still want log messages but not to have them break up your commands, use "logging synchronous" under the line con 0 section. If you want the log messages to stop altogether, "no logging console" under global config should work. I never worked on a 7200 myself so I'm hoping those commands aren't too new.
thanks!
Finally new old tech!🎉
I love old Cisco stuff, keep it coming!
43:12 The reason you get an 80 percent success rate is because the router has to perform an ARP request to translate the IP address into the MAC address. During this time, the first ping packet times out. If you were to immediately issue another ping, all 5 packets would succeed because the ARP table is now populated!
Yeah nearly every time I set up a piece of new equipment, it drops the first packet. But pinging a second time will get you the full 5/6.
You beat me to it. I agree. This behavior seems to happen most often with old routers running IOS. You don't see this if you ping from a linux VM. Perhaps IOS is slow to process the ARP reply and the Echo request times out before it does.
makes sense!
You were on the right track with the lack of connectivity between your lab network and your home network. You had a route from the the lab network to you home network via RIP but your home network had no route to send data back. Dynamic routing support is virtually non-existent for Ubiquiti hardware so the only real option would be to enable NAT on the Cisco with the T1 interface as the inside and the connection to your home network as the outside.
makes sense! I was close ha
This video again was a travel into the past for me. ATM was very popular as WAN connection in the 2000s in europe, especially in germany. The double width PA was completly new to me. I have never seen them before.
3:24
Oh man, i miss my home network setup back in the day (circa 2000´s)using an IBM 8228 Token Ring MAU with my desktop, my server and my laptop.....good times of a great learning experience...
Clabretro excites my wonderment.
Wake up babe...new clabretro video just dropped
That aux port should be just another serial console port which you'd hook a dial-up modem for "offline" remote console access. They're not all too common in my world these days, but I still have a few pieces of critical equipment in my DC with 56k modems for "back door access" to.
Beyond that... despite the fact that we have multiple 10Gb circuits from network providers into my building in 2024, we still have legacy T1 and T3 shelves that are active and in use. The fact that so much legacy stuff lingers about so long still to this day blows my mind.
Thanks Caleb, this channel is the most fun on youtube right now. The antique tech stuff you uncover and learn / play with is just great.
Where I work, we just decommed the last T1 circuit in 2022. It was a big enough deal that we even had a company party. 😁🎉
We had 3 7206VXR's at work that used to do the WAN connectivity. They got retired in like 2015 I think. All 3 had the NPE-G2s.
I got inspired and tried to fire them up. Unfortunately, one of the Chassis's has a bad fan and a Dead NPE-G2. But I'm building out a lab at work with the remaining two. We had a Cisco 2951 as the core router, but I can get it pegged at 100% cpu pretty easily so the VXR's should be an improvement!
Another Sunday morning with old Cisco gear, I love it 😉
it wouldn't be a good weekend without a clabretro upload. Thanks!
I used 500 of them back in the day to run an ISP - Asia-Online. They were excellent - Reliable machine..
I love your videos.
I'm using your videos to learn about old tech and English in an interessting way :)
thank you! that's awesome.
Amazing work! I think the config save issue is just one simple config register away .. cool to see how much ground you covered here.
This brings back memories. You could put the good SUP in them and run MPLS on them. We used 7200's to terminate tons of channelized DS3s to serve T1s to customers. Fun times and tons of BERT tests.
Love the 7204VXR! I use one as my core router in the datashed.
Prior employer, we used lots of these early 2000's as Customer Edge (CE) routers on MPLS networks, with either E3 PA's or the Sonet/SDH PA's, with a beefier NPE for the higher bandwidths. VXR I always though was voice related as they had the T1/E1 digital voice with DSP PA's so you could use the 7200 as a large voice gateway for a Call Mangler solution.
great video. You have entered POWER DRIVE.
In fact, you do want to use smaller subnets on the 10.0.0.0/8 range, it allows much more efficient use of address space, which is exactly what subnetting is all about. Pretty much the only maths you need to remember in networking is 2^n and 2^n-2, where n is the number of bits in your subnet/host range. So for your /24 subnet, that's 8 bits for the hosts, so 2^8 means 256 IP addresses, and 2^8-2 means 254 usable IP addresses since the first and last addresses are unusable (subnet and broadcast addresses). That allows for 2^16 subnets (i.e. 10.0.0.0/24 to 10.255.255.0/24), or 65536 subnets. That's a lot of subnets, but depending on the way you carve them up, they can be used up pretty quickly in a large organisation.
So on a point-to-point link, you only really need two IP addresses, and while a /31 would provide one bit or 2^1=2 host addresses, both are unusable since you still need a subnet address and broadcast address, so you really need a /30 for 2^2-2=2 host addresses.
That being said, a /24 is fine for a point-to-point link in the lab, it's not best practice, but it'll work just fine as you saw. However if you are planning on doing certifications, you really should be practising subnetting so you can work out the numbers quickly. Back when I was at uni, I practised it so much, when I sat for our 1.5 hour subnetting exam, I had it finished in
I have been tempted to take an exam ha
Your collection's are awesome. Great video!
thanks!
thinking about how I had to do all this in exams now I'm watching these videos of IOS config for fun on a weekend
The reason the chassis is the same size for 4 or 6 slot (aside from cost saving for using the same case like you said) is probably because it making it smaller wouldn't change it from a 3U to a 2U, and it's a sin to not follow the size conventions in corporate gear!
great video clab, can't wait to see what the whole retro network looks like over time.
A buddy had an OC3 running to one of these back in the day. Good memories.
Excellent video! A lot of the stuff went over my head as a networking and homelab noob, but it has given me a lot of stuff to research out of curiosity haha. Love the content!
thank you!
One of the first things i do to a cisco switch/router
enable
-> config t
--> line con 0
---> logging synchronous
you will thank me later.
Dont forget
line vty 0 15
logging sync
definitely doing this now
You could have a play with BGP, getting it going at a basic level is quite simple but then it allows for a lot of flexibility if you start adding in route maps etc for filtering/messing with the inputs/outputs of the routing tables
definitely, planning to do that eventually!
finally finished it, and i watched the dslam video like 2 day ago and was like i wonder if clabretro is going to touch ATM lol
On the hot insertion. If you look at the midplane connector you'll see that the pins are different length. That allows the power grounds to be atrached before the data or hot power pins which prevents power surging in the device. Some, notably IBM server chassis can turn off the power to a card or ram slot allowing its removal and replacement if cable management was used. Part of the cost is this extra power manangement designed into the custom connector.
Very interesting to see a *more* modern 7201 router. I suppose it was effectively replaced by the ASR line later on.
Kind of; I don't know the specifics but one company I work with had VXRs that were old technology and being replaced with the ONS line. By the time I had started to get my footing and learn the network, the ASR 9000 line were the newest thing and they were working on moving some of the network to them. Nowadays one client is using ASRs, one is using a mix of ASRs and NCSes. I think one of the clients still had VXRs(?) for their OADM tandem voice stuff, but it's in the process of being decommissioned.
Sun Microsystems used RIP heavily in the 90s. Even is the mid/late 90s. Well at least in the ENG domain. The only time I saw RIPv2 was CBS in the early 2000s
Awesome video as always!
thank you!
Here we go! More Cisco stuff. As always man. You are an awesome dude. Awesome video.
Good thing you used the word "typically" because you can configure VLANs on ports such as Ethernet ports, and route between these two virtual interfaces, but all traffic is only flowing through one cable. 🤯
Woah! The 7201! Modern cisco logo too!
Yes dude, it is super annoying hahahaha.... When messing with my Cisco gear over console, it's annoying, those automatic messages. Ssh/telnet doesn't have this issue
When I saw the default gateway not set, kinda facepalmed abit. But I made that mistake before lol.
haha yeah not diving into VLANs just yet! (though I have them set up on the main ubiquity rack). I really need to setup SSH into these things too
When you said “do routing”, I was thinking to myself “please don’t use RIP, please don’t use RIP…” haha.
😆
Check your config register value (e.g. in "show ver"), it migt be set to ignore the config on boot. You'll want it to be 0x2102 (0x2142 tells it to ignore the stored config). You can change it through "config t" and then I think its "config-register 0x2102".
You can verify that the configuration is there on boot with a "show start".
perfect! figured it was something simple, I'll give that a shot.
So, at 34:49 when you're talking about live commands, it doesn't show up over SSH. Generally the console interface is treated more as a resource of last resort, so it all prints debugging info for troubleshooting. You can turn it off completely with "no logging console" or limit it to "logging console " which can be emergencies, alerts, critical, errors, warnings, notifications, information, or debugging.
And, as other folks have mentioned, ATM still exists for a lot of telco stuff and ISP fiber sometime and stuff. GPON uses Ethernet for data and ATM for voice.
35:41 - getting the log messages interrupting you while writing commands. You can stop this by doing the "logging synchronous" command on your console line. Like this:
Router>enable
Router#configure terminal
Router(config)#line console 0
Router(config-line)#logging synchronous
Router(config-line)#end
That will stop those annoying logs getting in the way. You can also apply this to the VTY lines (which are used for telnet and ssh connections) by using the above commands but with "Router(config)#line vty 0 4" or "Router(config)#line vty 0 15" depending on how many lines (don't know on routers as old as the 7200s).
ATM not much used in the US I do t think but I think in other less developed areas of the world. Used circuit switching protocols instead of packet switched. Supposedly more reliable when routing over unreliable networks/providers. I think the gist was that many independent virtual circuits were created and traffic was sent over each of those circuits asynchronously which could span any number of providers and networks and recombined at the other end.
It was very used in wan connections that were not vpn because they didn't traverse the internet. It was nothing a computer jockey would ever run into. Banks, Industrial and government systems. think unpowered/dark fiber point2point links that didn't interact with a switched telephone network.
you need to use the “logging synchronous” command to have the console messages wait, or “no logging console” to turn off console logging. If you’re telneted or sshed into a vty line you can turn the messages on and off with “terminal monitor” and “terminal no monitor”
thanks!
this is a chonker! it was so taller!
Another great and entertaining video! Thank you.
if you are using /24 thats Classless routing. That is the reason the standard moved away from classed routing Mixing the terms will cause confusion. A /24 is where it is sure you dont need the address space, but it 100% doesnt matter. Using a 10 network between the 192 networks is good practice because it reminds you that you are changing domains/networks. it makes the routing rules visually distinct and much easier to troubleshoot.
Something’s wrong with me, at 12:28 the sound of that click had me all giddy ;eager to go connect something up!
Very expensive router. Love it! 😂 Keep these awesome videos rolling out bud!
The Linksys stack is growing 😂
Now that you have all these PAs, you should pick up a 75xx chassis (I recommend a 7513 for the full experience) with VIP2/50s or VIP4/80s.
Also, interesting note... the midplane is PCI.
OMG,BURN the ATM PA! ATM wasn't really much of a competitor for ethernet, more of the "new evolution of frame relay". ATM is garbage. There's a reason you haven't heard much about it.
Look into "config-registers" for your troubles regarding saving the config.
I think the solution might be:
conf t
config-register 0x2102
end
wr
reload
Edit: Comment was made before your outro ;)
I think you're right!
I believe that that dual width card might be for emulating T1's over ATM. One of the things that ATM could do well before it was possible over IP/Ethernet was Time Division Multiplexing Circuit Emulation
Just awesome content!!
Oddly fascinating
yeah im like you with the nes games...i still love collecting games with variants ! i m into rare japan gaming hardware ....great video....
49:17 your config register is set to 0x2142, which ignores startup-config. Change it to 0x2102 for a normal boot!!
thanks!
One moment I thought you were gonna pull out a NES cartridge adapter for the 7200 there 😉
I wish 😆
Today you can get a Arista with soooooo many ports for so cheap! Amazing how expensive networking stuff used to cost back then
Never seen 4 slots for SD ram before until now.... But that was more when I was digging into desktops supporting windows 98, 2000 & early release of XP.
I count 11 Linksys in the stack ;) Also token ring would be interesting to see :)
For the rare case that I need to access the Cisco CLI via the console port, I use the cable that's RJ45 to USB. NO extra adaptors needed.
Very eXpensive Router
In my experience, EIGRP (and if inter-vender-ops are required OSPF) are just as easy to configure as RIP, but they allow CIDR routing, and converge much faster.
You can create crossover cables pretty easily. One end is T568A and the other end is T568B. Voila!
But I know you just want to put all of those switches to use :P
That only works for 10/100 ethernet. If you tried that pinout on a Gigabit switch that doesn't supoort mdix it still wouldn't work because gig uses all 4 pairs. On any device that supports mdix you don't need a crossover at all. That generation of cisco gear it was hit or miss if it supported mdix and the pinout for a gig crosover never had a standard since in addition to swapping pairs 1&3, you also need to swap pairs 2&4.
@@RowanHawkins Honestly forgot about that, but you're totally right, of course! I was always under the impression that Gigabit Ethernet required auto MDI-X, but it may have just been an option that almost everyone ended up using.
Welcome back!
Made my weekend!
I looked up the part number on those Intel Chips and it says they are Gigabit controllers. So that I/O card with the Fast Ethernet ports may be Gig.
That is interesting since the Intel 82543GC is a gigE controller, even though this board has none. I would wonder if it's used internally on the backplane somewhere, but the 7200-series backplane is actually PCI so that wouldn't make sense.
This C7200-I/O-2FE/E in this video only has 2x10/100 ports, while the C7200-I/O-GE+E does have the gigabit port.
very interesting!
Use the command from conf t "no logging console" to stop seeing those messages all the time.
"Telneted into the secure console server"
Haha I know. I love that MRV console unit though, use it any chance I get an excuse.
I think that stack of Linksys routers is about to become load bearing to the floor joist.
all part of the plan
BTW: If you want to stop the issue your were having @ 35:40 with the console; running the "logging synchronous" for "line con 0" under global config works.
Router(config)# line con 0
Router(config-line)# logging synchronous
thanks!
Obviously you solved things, but the simplest would have been to start with static IP and gateway on each PC, and a single static default route on each router pointing at each other's T1. Static is simplest at first.
Yeah I was going to resort to that if RIP didn't work but I figured I'd just jump right in haha
Amigo, I would like to see the technology of Cisco routers go into more detail, such as the T1 and T3 connection and how they are split.
eventually!
> "our `copy run start` command wasn't enough"
back in my day, we used to have to `write mem`
You might look for something with E1 ports instead of T1 as you get a bit more speed from them (2048 mbs vs 1536 mbs) and are no harder to set up.
>would of cost 30k
Oh he already adjusted for inflation
>he hadn't adjusted for inflation yet
🙃
Hahah 19:32 "Looking forward to losing this"
GD WINDOWS FIREWALL!!! 41:12
"list price" - LOL - no one paid list price. I worked for a carrier who had one of the highest discounts at that time - 70% - so we paid 30% of those list prices..... Most of our PE routers where 7200 VXRs.. A whole lot ATM stuff.. I still have a Cisco 3620 with an 155M ATM card.
Here in Europe we also go a few more bytes out of the serial interfaces as E1's here where 2 Mbit/s and E3 was 45 Mbit/s..
$9,000 in 1998 is still expensive in my book 😆
But yeah that's why I always mention "list price" -- it's usually the only accurately-documented numbers you can find but of course businesses wouldn't be paying that especially if they're buying at large volume.
Super cool stuff! Loved the video as always. I wonder if it’s possible to dump the development bootloader (if it’s of any importance). You’ve got quite the setup down there now lol.
I was just about as excited as you were when you loaded into the map in Half Life 🤣
haha thanks. yeah I think I will figure out how to save that off (assuming I can't find it online) before I upgrade.
10:41 MII, i believe current SFP devices interface to the host is MII.... so most interfaces (100T/100X) has a MII connection internally.
oh cool, I didn't know that
@@clabretro i deduced that basically 10 years ago while trying to compare 1989 Ethernet (with AUI) with current today 1(0)G fiber.
AUI used because it WOULD HAVE been A REAL hassle doing a vampire connection in the rear of a computer....
Somewhere in all devices (at least wired things) there must be something like MII.
If you are able to make your own T1 cables, why not make cross-over cables yourself?
However, I really like this videos and it is refreshing that there is not a Cisco network engineer with 20 years experience doing it, but someone who does step by step learning.
It is really about understanding how networks work, from the pin out of the cable up to network routing and running services.
There are gigabit fiber ethernet cards, isdn, and docsis cable cards too.
An outlet with the ground at the top is the best m8
@15:20 "Alien Port Adapter" LOL