It helps quite a bit to enable CDP and LLDP in a home lab. Then you can show cdp neighbors detail or show lldp nei det to find gear. Future things for vids would be doing dot1q interfaces on the routers to do inter vlan routing when you don't have a L3 switch in the rack. You'll do the same thing on the PIX so you can have more vlans than ports in the PIX. Private vlans can control your security for stuff on the same vlan. You're sparking my interest to restart doing my home lab again, I stopped playing with it after I got my CCNP and it became a job. Now I'm doing mostly infosec and GRC, so not playing with the networking as much. I have so much gear to use in two 12u racks... :-)
I already said this on the patreon, but those IBM servers fit so perfectly with the Cisco 7200. So excited to see more Sun Microsystems though, but especially the Compaq Proliant. The power bar with the lit up switches though really ties it all together. Great build, clab.
On-the-fly notes: 7:20 -- That's a T3 card. While the original idea was to have a full roster of T-carriers, we pretty much only ever used T1s and T3s. Above that, the OC-x took over. (OC-3, OC-12, OC-48, and OC-192 particularly.) 16:30 -- "Some sort of autonegotiation" -- Nope, that's just the switch telling you that the port is in Spanning-Tree blocking mode. Under the original STP spec, the port listens for a while before entering Forwarding mode, to ensure it won't loop. Because the default timer of ... I think it's 15 seconds? ... is a small eternity now, you can use PortFast to bring the port up more quickly. 17:20 -- Can't ping Google. Yeah, this is almost certainly because your home network doesn't know how to get to your lab subnet, so it got the DNS request and then replied -- by sending that packet to the default gateway, which went out to the Internet. You would need a route to point 10.0/24 to the VXR's 192.168 IP. Depending on what your home router is, you might also need to tell it to allow the other subnets to use outbound NAT. 24:40 -- Re: Mounting on the front. You have to decide what you value most here. Cisco routers (like the ISRs, PIX/ASA, etc.) typically have a port side and a faceplate side. It's up to you whether you prefer a clean looking rack with pretty faceplates, or convenient access to the interfaces. It's usually easy to decide, since there are approximately 27 routers left in the world that still have faceplates that fully clip on properly, and even the "clean" side has a power cable sticking out, so you may as well set it up with the interface side visible. (To add to the quandary, the console port, lights, CF card, etc., might be on either side. Thanks, Cisco.) If you're mixing servers and networking equipment, it's pretty common to put the server faceplates toward the front, and the networking equipment facing toward the back, since that's where all your cables are anyway. This is why lots of networking equipment has an orderable option to change the direction of the fans (front to back, or back to front.) Except when it's left-to-right. Power distribution is almost always in the back, although with your fancy switches, you might prefer it up front. It just makes cable management harder. Even "proper" racks do a terrible job at this. Power Distribution Units (PDUs) are often in "zero-U" form that goes vertically along the rear sides ... which conveniently blocks access to the mounting rails, and sometimes to the equipment itself. Very few vendors have put two and two together and opted to make the cabinets a couple inches wider to accommodate vertical PDUs without interfering with the racked stuff. Maybe they'll figure it out eventually, but there's so much momentum in a 24-inch wide form factor that ... probably not. We can't have nice things. 25:10 -- Terminal Server IP pings. To get a reply from a _different_ IP, one of two things has to have happened: Either you're using .86 as a route to .2 (which might be because you set the gateway to 86, although that still doesn't make a ton of sense on a /24 when both should be in the broadcast domain -- and you might get an ICMP redirect where 86 tells you "just go directly to 2, dummy"), or they both resolved to the same MAC. Try showing your ARP table and see what it resolved for the .2 address and the .86 address. Compare that to the other host that can ping both. If you haven't set any static ARPs, it MIGHT be that they both have the same MAC address. Some vendors reuse MACs, and I've run into at least one vendor that just uses the same MAC on every device.... although I expect more from Cisco. Oh, and also make sure that the subnet mask is set correctly on the TS. I've seen Cisco stuff work in broadcast with the wrong subnet mask before. That was one of several times in my career where I saw something and thought, "How has this _ever_ worked correctly??"
Thanks for the great comment! It was strange, cleared out the ARP tables and everything. .86 was never present (the machine itself was 10.0.0.4, and none of the interfaces were .86). I have a suspicion it could be some odd WSL funny business going on, but haven't confirmed yet.
17:22 The devices on the 10.x network can't access the Internet for a couple of reasons, the Vxr router needs a default route set for your uplink (ip route 0.0.0.0. 0.0.0.0 ) as well as setting up a route on your existing networks router for the networks connected to the Vxr, you might want to implement a routing protocol such as ospf or eigrp for this
I highly recommend factory resetting as part of your workflow, ideally just before racking. Then the rack becomes a predictable entity. The 10.0.0.86 is probably some legacy config in the network gear.
Factory resetting deletes the lore that is included with used equipment. I love reading old hostnames, custom router setups and sometimes port descriptions if it was from a more advanced company.
A few days after seeing your video about using routers as dialup servers, I unexpectedly came across a used Cisco 1921 in a home security system shop and for my surprise it had a wic-2am-v2 modem. Despite having zero experience in network stuff (beyond configuring my modem😄) I could config it using your instructiond and with a help of spare parts that I had I have made a land line simulator that provides off hook and ringing voltage.(it doesn't look pretty but works). I now have my own dial up network and connected my retro PC to it.
I feel like I'm a couple decades ahead of you -- until a couple years ago I had two 42U custom-built short-depth optima EPS racks in Tek blue, one 19" and one 24", which housed may large collection of 90s surplus DEC (pmax, vax, alpha), Sun (sparc and ultrasparc), SGI, as well as network gear from Cisco, Allied Telesyn, DEC and Bay... I even had a large DLT robot for a while handling daily backups until I got a SDLT changer. I wish I had space to keep my old stuff and time to play with it, but alas. at least I can relive the memories along with you. thanks.
I'm also in the same boat with the cage nuts. They can be a bit annoying to put in once you have a more full rack with less access, but a $10 cage nut lever on Amazon fixes that. I can get them in faster than someone can fiddle around with some plastic bag full of plastic.
Once I found a cage nut tool, just found it tossed in a bag of cage nuts one day in the early 2000’s, I never had another cut finger or busted knuckle. Such a game changer for such a little simple tool! No need to spend 10 times the money on fancy rack studs once you have the right tool. Plus, I can’t imagine plastic holding up to the types of weight I used to put on cage nuts back in the day. 😎🙃
For the bottom of the rack: get a 1U shelf (Startech makes one, full width and adjustable length) and then don't bother with the universal rails for the next server up. I have my UPS on the bottom (on top of the shelf) and then a 4U server above that. Yes, you lose that 1U but you gain rigidity and you know for certain that those chonktastic IBMs aren't going anywhere.
Maybe do some iperf tests thru the VXR? My dusty memory seems to remember those things falling over pretty easily after a certain traffic level. Had one terminating an OC3 in a former life.
All depends on the npg in there, I know we even ran c7 switching on one, dsl bras etc, workbeast of its time. Didn't really like bgp reconvergance on the ams-ix
Oh I'm SURE they do. This was in an era where they still leaned heavily on the CPU for forwarding-plane stuff, and they also let you oversubscribe the backplane quite a bit. You had to be careful about how you populated some chassis to ensure you got the throughput you expected. I just Googled the datasheet, and it doesn't provide throughput numbers, but does claim a "maximum" of 6x Fast Ethernet ports, or 4x OC-3 ports. That suggests a ceiling of 600Mbps ... and even that might be ambitious. :-)
65xx series was better than the 72xx series, if I recall correctly. We did tons of gbe switching and full bgp4 table upstream on fiber gbics. Juniper was always more comfortable to work with though, all the way up to sds and sdr.
I just love seing you getting so hyped about all these things (see 27:30) It's like I'm seing myself in a mirror when I got my 25U rack, I just couldn't believe it, and now I am able to find good amount of stuff to just have fun with, and I'm so happy I'm not the only one this crazy about hardware on here! Keep up the good work, thank you so much for all your vids!
Love these kinds of vids! I’m exploring doing this at my home. I need to learn about everything: cooling requirements, power requirements, everything. I’d love to hear more detailed videos about how you are going to handle all the power requirements. I have a feeling an expensive electrician bill is going to be in my future. I want to get an old Compaq rack! Love those.
I think you'll like the rack studs for the smaller items. They're a lot easier to work with than the cage nuts in my opinion. They feel super sturdy when mounting smaller stuff like switches and routers. I am using them for my UDM Pro and UNVR.
Honestly, I've always had an interest in how the "internet" worked. I'm currently working in IT as support but recently I came across your channel. I watched your previous videos and it pushed me to study for both my Network+ certificate and then my CCNA.
This one hits hard. I just bought that 25U StarTech rack a couple months ago. Immediately filled it up completely full front and back, and then found just a couple more things on eBay ......
Hey, I got that same rack. I was worried it would be super cheap and crappy, given the price. It was a little frustrating to get it square, but other than that it's been a solid piece of equipment.
Great video! I just recently got involved in this whole server thing, network switches, etc. I recently acquired my first switch which is a Cisco Catalyst 2960-X series model. I have no XP in this but after hours of troubleshooting I was able to get it connected and configured. I love the work you put in and how you explain in detail, everything, the behind-the-scenes information too. Maybe if you have one lying around specifically a Catalyst WS-C2960X-24PS-L, I would love to watch a video in depth of setting it up and what not. I've been trying to see if you made a video with a similar device, but I haven't found one or missed it! Keep up the great work!
I'm actually surprised you didn't go for a nice old IBM cabinet, but I guess those don't just materialise in your basement. Still nice seeing some of the gear neatly racked up already.
I love the Retro Rack. I wish my wife was as understanding😉 Do you have a UPS? UPSs are usually placed at the bottom of a rack as they are quite heavy.
Sorry I’m late, I’m a sick plant 😢 I love your videos and the new rack dedicated to all things retro 😀 looking forward to you getting the token ring network working, I’ve never seen it before!
Your terminal server console is probably missing a default gateway, or it's set to something other than the current default gateway of that network, that's why it wont resppond to pings from outside, but you can easly access it over the local network...
Something that’s pretty cool is that Cisco actually made the 7200VXR kind of modern if you got the NPE-G2 card, as it has 3x RJ45/SFP ports and a dedicated FastEth port for management :) Anyways, awesome video! Really jealous that I don’t have all this stuff in my garage!
Like to keep stuff in piles on the floor… Un-approving wife… Stop calling us all out! Haha. It’s great to see videos that are so true to how this hobby goes sometimes. Honesty and showing all the struggles is a breath of fresh air in this space of retro tech videos. Along with plenty of educational material thrown in there about the hardware instead of JUST showing it off.
Hello! I think you would be interested in the Dell PowerConnect 5524 and 5548 switches. I grabbed one from my high-school's rack a few months ago for my homelab, and they are really strange. They have Cisco-flavored CLI and a custom Dell web UI, and use regular HDMI cables for stacking together. I know it's not in your regular date range for networking equipment, but it's really interesting how they work.
26:30 hey, that's the exact cable management they had at my old job, except it was ten times worse there. A massive web of cables between two fully loaded full-size racks.
This almost motivates me to put my rack together. Ha! Looking good! I hate that rails are hard to find. Maybe you could break a drill out or some self tappers and make others work? I guess the trays make more sense though, when you are going to end up with a 1000 more router, switches and servers! 😁
Take it from another nut with a rack, rack studs are life savers!!! Granted I only have a 36u, but my lab might not be 7 feet to the push tile ceiling. a number of 4u's couple of 2u's and pair of cisco 2960S's and it adds up. They help for guiding gear to be installed, but they are plastic. you'll want more shelves.
Nice work. I were working for a small hoster around 2007 and had to deal with many crazy self build servers from colocation customers in cheap shared racks. These L Rails are just a pain in the ... They steal space (we basically charged more for this type of rails). Its mounted but servicing and handling the servers is just a hassle. Proper rails make everything just more easy.
Nice setup. My guess with the "terminal-server"-router: check if the gateway is set correctly. This has effed my more than once and I had to drive back on site to fix a missing gateway...
@@clabretro I could be completely wrong about this, it's been a long while since I have done anything networking related but I would try using a crossover cable (ethernet A on one end and Ethernet B on the other) instead of a standard/straight-through cable between the switch and terminal server. You might have already touched on this in another video, I can't really remember if you did, but in ethernet networking, you can't connect "like" devices together using a standard cable. If you want to connect 2 switches together, you need a crossover cable so they can communicate. Same if you want to connect 2 routers, or even a PC to a router directly. I don't remember the exact reasoning for this but we were taught the OSI model of troubleshooting, which is basically "try the simplest thing first, then get more complex from there". Switching out the type of cable is one of the simplest things I can think of first, since the configuration between devices doesn't really warrant trying more complex troubleshooting quite yet. If I had to guess, that Terminal Server, while it is being assigned an IP Address, has a network interface that is more akin to a switch than a router, so switchport to switchport (switch to terminal server) possibly needs a crossover cable in this situation. Again, could be completely wrong about this one but I have been enjoying your retro networking videos and just want to try to contribute. 😄
Had to stop what i was doing well alyways i have to when you post. now fill the new rack and buy a annother one 😂 Cant wait for more content on the rack
NPE-G1 was a *huge* upgrade from something like an NPE-300 - you could easily take a full BGP view w/o issue on that thing, and given the cost of GigE interfaces at the time, having three on the back was just a huge bonus. We were able to run both of our upstream ISPs into the NPE and then use the 3rd port for our rack switch (this was an ISP in NYC, I believe one of the first 5 or so that survived any length of time). Also way more resilient in the face of DoS attacks than prior NPEs. Do you recall what the difference is in the VXR vs. non-VXR chassis? I think it was like 32-bit PCI interface for the cards vs. 64-bit? But perhaps other differences? Anyhow, found an OC-3 card for one of these the other day. Could probably make a whole $25 selling it on ebay. :(
Used to have one of those Startech racks. Downsized a lot after I got married and no longer have it, but it was really solid. Nice buy. I have to say though, seeing all those drain pipes right by all your hardware makes me nervous for you. I get it though, gotta make do with the space you have.
Is one rack enough? Perhaps a network rack and a server rack (with 48 port interconnects) and perhaps some fibre. Helpful to have raised floor to put it on which makes cable routing nicer. Depending on how you have the rack filled they can be unstable when you slide a server out, they usually have a plate to allow it to be fixed securely to the floor. Power can be an issue, I remember designing them with dual 32A PDUs with iec sockets to connect to the units. UPS at the bottom of course.
Cool vid. Been building racks for years. The Dell racks for example have built-in cable mgmt (I am not being critical) Also for network/cable management, you might try a 24 port keystone rack. Would help them thar cables in line.
Pro tip: for those right-angle rails, you should be able to flip them upside down and stack the gear on top. You lose one unit, but it prevents the issue of gear taking up slightly more than 1U. Also they won't block gear that's just wide enough to fit between the vertical rails. Edit: You can also slap a blanking plate over the front before you screw it in to make it look nicer.
The mere sight of rack nuts were so triggering. They're fine... till you need to install hundreds of them. The tips of my fingers were tingling just from looking at them, gnarly.
I always found it interesting to interface old generations of hardware with new stuff. There was one video on youtube with someone who connected an old 1930 teletype to a linux terminal. What about some 1980'ies token ring hardware that links to total modern stuff?
I have an old 2821 (which is ironically NIB) in the rafters of my attic, and I have no idea what to do with it. I don’t want to trash it, so I guess it will continue to sit there until either I die or I finally feel nostalgic enough to do something with it.
Is it possible that you make a video about how to set up dial up? You have one with an ATA but i wonder if that Cisco 2900 will do the job with more ports? Thanks for sharing. I'm doing it right now through a laptop with 56k modem and LAN with such an ATA.
Out of interest, if you installed those "universal rails" the other way around (rotate the pair 180 degrees), the lip would be a step down at the back, making it a little easier to rack things into them.
what about the HP proliant the one with hot-swap RAM (can't recall the name) or that one isn't retro enough LOL. I thought about trying those rack studs myself for my switch as I don't have the rails for it. It's literally on the floor inside my rack-lol (the entire thing is enclosed on wheels)
You should do a stream or stream-like video of the boring configuration stuff, I think it could be very interesting even if it's much slower and more fiddly.
Retro track idea. Pihole is a dns server that you can host yourself that blocks ads. I ran mine on a old Pentium III server running Debian. They still release a up to date version for 32 bit processors. Or the slightly newer Pentium 4 64 bit based xeons can run the newest versions of Debian or Ubuntu server. This way you could have an almost completely isolated retro net. Other than having to have a route out. But also create DNS entries for the retro net to access items via website rather than ip.
Niiiice! Now you can go set up a whole Sun/Solaris networked environment with all of your SPARC servers and get something like $100,000 of 2003 enterprise compute horsepower roaring away in there :)
As a note, the assembly directions are NOT wrong. Those large holes are used for large bolts, and belong on the back side of the rack when floor mounting it. It's to counter the weight of one or more pieces of equipment being unlocked and pulled out so the entire rack doesn't fall over, especially in rack configurations where heavy equipment like disk shelves are mounted higher up. Since you're using casters, it doesn't matter, but do be aware of the tip hazard as you fill this thing! 6:08
Interesting, it's odd because with those bottom members flipped around they don't quite fit as cleanly as they should (you can indeed bolt them in that way, but it doesn't seem right for whatever reason)
I always love seeing StarTech stuff haha, I know they are kinda crap but they are from my home city here in Canada. I even interned for them a long time ago.
These racks are actually pretty decent. Definitely sturdy enough to be trustworthy. IME, StarTech tends to nail the price/performance threshold. They're not the most premium ever, but they're accessible, and what you get for the money is a genuinely good value.
I was looking forward to a relaxing Sunday afternoon with a ClabRetro video.... But I'll take it on a Monday during work. 😂
People who work in IT, watching someone who works in IT do IT things for fun, my kinda day
About time you got a bigger rack.
We all look forward to the third rack appearing in about 12 months.
more likely than I ever would have thought
@@clabretro internet archive is down
From a ddos
It helps quite a bit to enable CDP and LLDP in a home lab. Then you can show cdp neighbors detail or show lldp nei det to find gear.
Future things for vids would be doing dot1q interfaces on the routers to do inter vlan routing when you don't have a L3 switch in the rack. You'll do the same thing on the PIX so you can have more vlans than ports in the PIX. Private vlans can control your security for stuff on the same vlan.
You're sparking my interest to restart doing my home lab again, I stopped playing with it after I got my CCNP and it became a job. Now I'm doing mostly infosec and GRC, so not playing with the networking as much. I have so much gear to use in two 12u racks... :-)
I have the same StarTech 42U rack for my home network (and the stuff on it) and I can honestly say I'm quite happy with it.
I already said this on the patreon, but those IBM servers fit so perfectly with the Cisco 7200. So excited to see more Sun Microsystems though, but especially the Compaq Proliant. The power bar with the lit up switches though really ties it all together. Great build, clab.
thank you! yeah I'm excited to get the Sun and Compaq gear in there!
I’d recommend adding a Sun Jumpstart server for installing Sun boxen. It’ll use a tftp server so there’s overlap with that need.
Definitely!
Excellent way of starting the week! I'm waiting super hyped for the upcoming content.
On-the-fly notes:
7:20 -- That's a T3 card. While the original idea was to have a full roster of T-carriers, we pretty much only ever used T1s and T3s. Above that, the OC-x took over. (OC-3, OC-12, OC-48, and OC-192 particularly.)
16:30 -- "Some sort of autonegotiation" -- Nope, that's just the switch telling you that the port is in Spanning-Tree blocking mode. Under the original STP spec, the port listens for a while before entering Forwarding mode, to ensure it won't loop. Because the default timer of ... I think it's 15 seconds? ... is a small eternity now, you can use PortFast to bring the port up more quickly.
17:20 -- Can't ping Google. Yeah, this is almost certainly because your home network doesn't know how to get to your lab subnet, so it got the DNS request and then replied -- by sending that packet to the default gateway, which went out to the Internet. You would need a route to point 10.0/24 to the VXR's 192.168 IP. Depending on what your home router is, you might also need to tell it to allow the other subnets to use outbound NAT.
24:40 -- Re: Mounting on the front. You have to decide what you value most here. Cisco routers (like the ISRs, PIX/ASA, etc.) typically have a port side and a faceplate side. It's up to you whether you prefer a clean looking rack with pretty faceplates, or convenient access to the interfaces. It's usually easy to decide, since there are approximately 27 routers left in the world that still have faceplates that fully clip on properly, and even the "clean" side has a power cable sticking out, so you may as well set it up with the interface side visible. (To add to the quandary, the console port, lights, CF card, etc., might be on either side. Thanks, Cisco.) If you're mixing servers and networking equipment, it's pretty common to put the server faceplates toward the front, and the networking equipment facing toward the back, since that's where all your cables are anyway. This is why lots of networking equipment has an orderable option to change the direction of the fans (front to back, or back to front.) Except when it's left-to-right. Power distribution is almost always in the back, although with your fancy switches, you might prefer it up front. It just makes cable management harder. Even "proper" racks do a terrible job at this. Power Distribution Units (PDUs) are often in "zero-U" form that goes vertically along the rear sides ... which conveniently blocks access to the mounting rails, and sometimes to the equipment itself. Very few vendors have put two and two together and opted to make the cabinets a couple inches wider to accommodate vertical PDUs without interfering with the racked stuff. Maybe they'll figure it out eventually, but there's so much momentum in a 24-inch wide form factor that ... probably not. We can't have nice things.
25:10 -- Terminal Server IP pings. To get a reply from a _different_ IP, one of two things has to have happened: Either you're using .86 as a route to .2 (which might be because you set the gateway to 86, although that still doesn't make a ton of sense on a /24 when both should be in the broadcast domain -- and you might get an ICMP redirect where 86 tells you "just go directly to 2, dummy"), or they both resolved to the same MAC. Try showing your ARP table and see what it resolved for the .2 address and the .86 address. Compare that to the other host that can ping both. If you haven't set any static ARPs, it MIGHT be that they both have the same MAC address. Some vendors reuse MACs, and I've run into at least one vendor that just uses the same MAC on every device.... although I expect more from Cisco. Oh, and also make sure that the subnet mask is set correctly on the TS. I've seen Cisco stuff work in broadcast with the wrong subnet mask before. That was one of several times in my career where I saw something and thought, "How has this _ever_ worked correctly??"
Thanks for the great comment! It was strange, cleared out the ARP tables and everything. .86 was never present (the machine itself was 10.0.0.4, and none of the interfaces were .86). I have a suspicion it could be some odd WSL funny business going on, but haven't confirmed yet.
I'm at work watching you put together a rack, when I should be working probably.
17:22 The devices on the 10.x network can't access the Internet for a couple of reasons, the Vxr router needs a default route set for your uplink (ip route 0.0.0.0. 0.0.0.0 ) as well as setting up a route on your existing networks router for the networks connected to the Vxr, you might want to implement a routing protocol such as ospf or eigrp for this
I highly recommend factory resetting as part of your workflow, ideally just before racking. Then the rack becomes a predictable entity. The 10.0.0.86 is probably some legacy config in the network gear.
Factory resetting deletes the lore that is included with used equipment. I love reading old hostnames, custom router setups and sometimes port descriptions if it was from a more advanced company.
@@uiopuiop3472 for sure but you do that on the bench to look backward, not in the rack going forward
A few days after seeing your video about using routers as dialup servers, I unexpectedly came across a used Cisco 1921 in a home security system shop and for my surprise it had a wic-2am-v2 modem. Despite having zero experience in network stuff (beyond configuring my modem😄) I could config it using your instructiond and with a help of spare parts that I had I have made a land line simulator that provides off hook and ringing voltage.(it doesn't look pretty but works). I now have my own dial up network and connected my retro PC to it.
awesome!
Yes! Answering machine fun is in your future!
@@SproutyPottedPlant If you mean nuisance calls, I am isolated from any landline, otherwise i don't understand your joke.
I feel like I'm a couple decades ahead of you -- until a couple years ago I had two 42U custom-built short-depth optima EPS racks in Tek blue, one 19" and one 24", which housed may large collection of 90s surplus DEC (pmax, vax, alpha), Sun (sparc and ultrasparc), SGI, as well as network gear from Cisco, Allied Telesyn, DEC and Bay... I even had a large DLT robot for a while handling daily backups until I got a SDLT changer.
I wish I had space to keep my old stuff and time to play with it, but alas. at least I can relive the memories along with you. thanks.
I will forever be an evangelist for the (somewhat uncommon) 37U rack, which will roll through most doorways.
I'm also in the same boat with the cage nuts. They can be a bit annoying to put in once you have a more full rack with less access, but a $10 cage nut lever on Amazon fixes that. I can get them in faster than someone can fiddle around with some plastic bag full of plastic.
Once I found a cage nut tool, just found it tossed in a bag of cage nuts one day in the early 2000’s, I never had another cut finger or busted knuckle. Such a game changer for such a little simple tool! No need to spend 10 times the money on fancy rack studs once you have the right tool. Plus, I can’t imagine plastic holding up to the types of weight I used to put on cage nuts back in the day. 😎🙃
For the bottom of the rack: get a 1U shelf (Startech makes one, full width and adjustable length) and then don't bother with the universal rails for the next server up. I have my UPS on the bottom (on top of the shelf) and then a 4U server above that. Yes, you lose that 1U but you gain rigidity and you know for certain that those chonktastic IBMs aren't going anywhere.
Maybe do some iperf tests thru the VXR? My dusty memory seems to remember those things falling over pretty easily after a certain traffic level. Had one terminating an OC3 in a former life.
I'll definitely try some perf and load tests in the future
All depends on the npg in there, I know we even ran c7 switching on one, dsl bras etc, workbeast of its time. Didn't really like bgp reconvergance on the ams-ix
Oh I'm SURE they do. This was in an era where they still leaned heavily on the CPU for forwarding-plane stuff, and they also let you oversubscribe the backplane quite a bit. You had to be careful about how you populated some chassis to ensure you got the throughput you expected.
I just Googled the datasheet, and it doesn't provide throughput numbers, but does claim a "maximum" of 6x Fast Ethernet ports, or 4x OC-3 ports. That suggests a ceiling of 600Mbps ... and even that might be ambitious. :-)
65xx series was better than the 72xx series, if I recall correctly. We did tons of gbe switching and full bgp4 table upstream on fiber gbics. Juniper was always more comfortable to work with though, all the way up to sds and sdr.
I just love seing you getting so hyped about all these things (see 27:30)
It's like I'm seing myself in a mirror when I got my 25U rack, I just couldn't believe it, and now I am able to find good amount of stuff to just have fun with, and I'm so happy I'm not the only one this crazy about hardware on here!
Keep up the good work, thank you so much for all your vids!
thank you!
I absolutely love Rack Studs! Especially great for homelab use, to rack stuff by yourself
Love these kinds of vids! I’m exploring doing this at my home. I need to learn about everything: cooling requirements, power requirements, everything. I’d love to hear more detailed videos about how you are going to handle all the power requirements. I have a feeling an expensive electrician bill is going to be in my future. I want to get an old Compaq rack! Love those.
Best. Monday. Ever. Thank you for the drop Mr Lab! ❤
Nice to hear, that the fans sound fan-tastic in the Cisco 7206.
Nice!
Be sure to do proper cable management with cable guides, different color etc. A properly wired up rack is very beautiful!
that's the plan!
First you start out with two circles in the cross member and then you build the rest of the damn rack was my same experience building one of those.
Nice rack! Fun and games on the networking; as I'd expect lol. You're building a whole network exchange here mate!
I think you'll like the rack studs for the smaller items. They're a lot easier to work with than the cage nuts in my opinion. They feel super sturdy when mounting smaller stuff like switches and routers. I am using them for my UDM Pro and UNVR.
great video to watch during my study hall
I love your videos. They bring lots of nostalgia seeing the old equipment go brrrr
Honestly, I've always had an interest in how the "internet" worked. I'm currently working in IT as support but recently I came across your channel. I watched your previous videos and it pushed me to study for both my Network+ certificate and then my CCNA.
I'm glad to hear that, good luck studying!
This one hits hard. I just bought that 25U StarTech rack a couple months ago. Immediately filled it up completely full front and back, and then found just a couple more things on eBay ......
it's truly shocking how easy it is to fill them
Can't wait for more videos on the Retro Rack! It looks super cool so far.
Hey, I got that same rack. I was worried it would be super cheap and crappy, given the price. It was a little frustrating to get it square, but other than that it's been a solid piece of equipment.
Excellent, look forward to following your retro rack journey :)
Great video! I just recently got involved in this whole server thing, network switches, etc. I recently acquired my first switch which is a Cisco Catalyst 2960-X series model. I have no XP in this but after hours of troubleshooting I was able to get it connected and configured. I love the work you put in and how you explain in detail, everything, the behind-the-scenes information too. Maybe if you have one lying around specifically a Catalyst WS-C2960X-24PS-L, I would love to watch a video in depth of setting it up and what not. I've been trying to see if you made a video with a similar device, but I haven't found one or missed it! Keep up the great work!
I'm actually surprised you didn't go for a nice old IBM cabinet, but I guess those don't just materialise in your basement.
Still nice seeing some of the gear neatly racked up already.
never thought I'd find retro networking videos interesting (as someone who is in their 20s) :), but I do, keep up the great work :D
thank you, glad you like it!
@@clabretro you're welcome 🙂
I love the Retro Rack. I wish my wife was as understanding😉
Do you have a UPS? UPSs are usually placed at the bottom of a rack as they are quite heavy.
I have one in the original rack, decided it didn't really make sense to have a UPS in the retro rack since the gear will be off most of the time.
Just keep telling your wife you want a bigger rack than hers; They are always understanding like that hahaha! @dono42
Love it! Looking forward to future videos!
I bought a terminal server (Cyclades Alterpath ACS8) because of you. Ohh boy, the side quest.....and scope creep.
Sorry I’m late, I’m a sick plant 😢 I love your videos and the new rack dedicated to all things retro 😀 looking forward to you getting the token ring network working, I’ve never seen it before!
All the space for activities!!
Your terminal server console is probably missing a default gateway, or it's set to something other than the current default gateway of that network, that's why it wont resppond to pings from outside, but you can easly access it over the local network...
Something that’s pretty cool is that Cisco actually made the 7200VXR kind of modern if you got the NPE-G2 card, as it has 3x RJ45/SFP ports and a dedicated FastEth port for management :) Anyways, awesome video! Really jealous that I don’t have all this stuff in my garage!
Nice step I have several racks they all run short on space. Like me too many toys. But what fun!
hell yes! i've been waiting for this for a long time
Like to keep stuff in piles on the floor… Un-approving wife… Stop calling us all out! Haha.
It’s great to see videos that are so true to how this hobby goes sometimes. Honesty and showing all the struggles is a breath of fresh air in this space of retro tech videos.
Along with plenty of educational material thrown in there about the hardware instead of JUST showing it off.
Dude, Im doing basically the same thing at the moment (just got my Rittal 42U rack set up), love to see some of this infrstructure stuff!
awesome!
your videos are sooooo relaxing, tysm for making my day
glad you like them!
Looking forward to the content. Love your channel! 🤜🤛
thanks!
Hello! I think you would be interested in the Dell PowerConnect 5524 and 5548 switches. I grabbed one from my high-school's rack a few months ago for my homelab, and they are really strange.
They have Cisco-flavored CLI and a custom Dell web UI, and use regular HDMI cables for stacking together. I know it's not in your regular date range for networking equipment, but it's really interesting how they work.
26:30 hey, that's the exact cable management they had at my old job, except it was ten times worse there. A massive web of cables between two fully loaded full-size racks.
The fun is making it, breaking it and re-making it again. Ah, the possibilities. 😁
I have the same big starteck rack and love it
My soul needed this.
This almost motivates me to put my rack together. Ha! Looking good! I hate that rails are hard to find. Maybe you could break a drill out or some self tappers and make others work? I guess the trays make more sense though, when you are going to end up with a 1000 more router, switches and servers! 😁
yeah I'm gonna have to get clever haha
Take it from another nut with a rack, rack studs are life savers!!! Granted I only have a 36u, but my lab might not be 7 feet to the push tile ceiling. a number of 4u's couple of 2u's and pair of cisco 2960S's and it adds up. They help for guiding gear to be installed, but they are plastic. you'll want more shelves.
cool to see you expand your homelab! maybe you could use a 2u server for SNMP monitoring of the retro rack?
Nice work. I were working for a small hoster around 2007 and had to deal with many crazy self build servers from colocation customers in cheap shared racks. These L Rails are just a pain in the ... They steal space (we basically charged more for this type of rails). Its mounted but servicing and handling the servers is just a hassle. Proper rails make everything just more easy.
YASSS
Rack stuff!
And retro stuff!
Gotta love it :D
I need more of this ASAP!
Awesome video... can I just say, I love your rack. I bet everyone likes looking at your rack!
Nice setup. My guess with the "terminal-server"-router: check if the gateway is set correctly. This has effed my more than once and I had to drive back on site to fix a missing gateway...
i thought for sure that was going to be it too but it didn't make a difference, really weird
@@clabretro I could be completely wrong about this, it's been a long while since I have done anything networking related but I would try using a crossover cable (ethernet A on one end and Ethernet B on the other) instead of a standard/straight-through cable between the switch and terminal server.
You might have already touched on this in another video, I can't really remember if you did, but in ethernet networking, you can't connect "like" devices together using a standard cable. If you want to connect 2 switches together, you need a crossover cable so they can communicate. Same if you want to connect 2 routers, or even a PC to a router directly. I don't remember the exact reasoning for this but we were taught the OSI model of troubleshooting, which is basically "try the simplest thing first, then get more complex from there". Switching out the type of cable is one of the simplest things I can think of first, since the configuration between devices doesn't really warrant trying more complex troubleshooting quite yet.
If I had to guess, that Terminal Server, while it is being assigned an IP Address, has a network interface that is more akin to a switch than a router, so switchport to switchport (switch to terminal server) possibly needs a crossover cable in this situation.
Again, could be completely wrong about this one but I have been enjoying your retro networking videos and just want to try to contribute. 😄
Had to stop what i was doing well alyways i have to when you post. now fill the new rack and buy a annother one 😂 Cant wait for more content on the rack
Unexpected 13th Warrior reference! 😍
NPE-G1 was a *huge* upgrade from something like an NPE-300 - you could easily take a full BGP view w/o issue on that thing, and given the cost of GigE interfaces at the time, having three on the back was just a huge bonus. We were able to run both of our upstream ISPs into the NPE and then use the 3rd port for our rack switch (this was an ISP in NYC, I believe one of the first 5 or so that survived any length of time). Also way more resilient in the face of DoS attacks than prior NPEs. Do you recall what the difference is in the VXR vs. non-VXR chassis? I think it was like 32-bit PCI interface for the cards vs. 64-bit? But perhaps other differences?
Anyhow, found an OC-3 card for one of these the other day. Could probably make a whole $25 selling it on ebay. :(
I also recently installed Mannington Laminate!
haha nice
This will be a very interesting season 🙂
I find it therapeutic building PC's and messing around with my mobile rack cabinet too.
Used to have one of those Startech racks. Downsized a lot after I got married and no longer have it, but it was really solid. Nice buy.
I have to say though, seeing all those drain pipes right by all your hardware makes me nervous for you. I get it though, gotta make do with the space you have.
Yeah... if there's a water event this stuff is in trouble lol.
Is one rack enough? Perhaps a network rack and a server rack (with 48 port interconnects) and perhaps some fibre. Helpful to have raised floor to put it on which makes cable routing nicer. Depending on how you have the rack filled they can be unstable when you slide a server out, they usually have a plate to allow it to be fixed securely to the floor. Power can be an issue, I remember designing them with dual 32A PDUs with iec sockets to connect to the units. UPS at the bottom of course.
Cool vid. Been building racks for years. The Dell racks for example have built-in cable mgmt (I am not being critical)
Also for network/cable management, you might try a 24 port keystone rack. Would help them thar cables in line.
Will definitely be adding in some keystone panels to help with cable management!
@20:24 (what a coincidence) - Yes, that looks nice.
27:43 I feel your pain regarding getting rail kits. Rarer than the hardware most of the time
Impressive!!
Pro tip: for those right-angle rails, you should be able to flip them upside down and stack the gear on top. You lose one unit, but it prevents the issue of gear taking up slightly more than 1U. Also they won't block gear that's just wide enough to fit between the vertical rails. Edit: You can also slap a blanking plate over the front before you screw it in to make it look nicer.
I'll experiment with that!
Those shelves work fine, I have used 100's of them for custom blackbox builds for a company i use to work at
Yeah might need to just spread them out a bit more
The mere sight of rack nuts were so triggering. They're fine... till you need to install hundreds of them. The tips of my fingers were tingling just from looking at them, gnarly.
Have 1 or 2 heavy weight sidling shelves with 4U space for hot swap stuff.
Patch Panel above or between.
I always found it interesting to interface old generations of hardware with new stuff. There was one video on youtube with someone who connected an old 1930 teletype to a linux terminal.
What about some 1980'ies token ring hardware that links to total modern stuff?
yeah will definitely try to mix token ring with modern stuff!
12:10 **The fans sound fantastic**
Pun intended! 🙂
Love your videos 😍
I have an old 2821 (which is ironically NIB) in the rafters of my attic, and I have no idea what to do with it.
I don’t want to trash it, so I guess it will continue to sit there until either I die or I finally feel nostalgic enough to do something with it.
Is it possible that you make a video about how to set up dial up? You have one with an ATA but i wonder if that Cisco 2900 will do the job with more ports? Thanks for sharing. I'm doing it right now through a laptop with 56k modem and LAN with such an ATA.
I've never understood networking.
Maybe I should get into it now that I have the space.
I'd be real interested in a network diagram of of how you've got everything now, versus how you're planning to have it in the near-ish future!
Out of interest, if you installed those "universal rails" the other way around (rotate the pair 180 degrees), the lip would be a step down at the back, making it a little easier to rack things into them.
GET RACK STUDS. THEY'RE AMAZING.
23:40 oh there they are. LOL
haha
I have two Cisco 1720's with twin t1 csu/dsu cards in them. Free to a good home. Hmu
as soon as I saw this ran to my room
good video
what about the HP proliant the one with hot-swap RAM (can't recall the name) or that one isn't retro enough LOL. I thought about trying those rack studs myself for my switch as I don't have the rails for it. It's literally on the floor inside my rack-lol (the entire thing is enclosed on wheels)
oh yeah that big thing will make an appearance eventually
You should do a stream or stream-like video of the boring configuration stuff, I think it could be very interesting even if it's much slower and more fiddly.
Yeah been thinking about something like that, maybe in the future!
I’ll look to see if I have brackets for the 2500 router, I have soo many.. what zipcode are you in? Maybe I’ll ship you the whole box instead.
Sweet! I'm in the Denver area, feel free to reach out via email (it's in the channel's links section)
Retro track idea. Pihole is a dns server that you can host yourself that blocks ads. I ran mine on a old Pentium III server running Debian. They still release a up to date version for 32 bit processors. Or the slightly newer Pentium 4 64 bit based xeons can run the newest versions of Debian or Ubuntu server. This way you could have an almost completely isolated retro net. Other than having to have a route out. But also create DNS entries for the retro net to access items via website rather than ip.
Niiiice! Now you can go set up a whole Sun/Solaris networked environment with all of your SPARC servers and get something like $100,000 of 2003 enterprise compute horsepower roaring away in there :)
That's the plan!
As a note, the assembly directions are NOT wrong. Those large holes are used for large bolts, and belong on the back side of the rack when floor mounting it. It's to counter the weight of one or more pieces of equipment being unlocked and pulled out so the entire rack doesn't fall over, especially in rack configurations where heavy equipment like disk shelves are mounted higher up. Since you're using casters, it doesn't matter, but do be aware of the tip hazard as you fill this thing! 6:08
Interesting, it's odd because with those bottom members flipped around they don't quite fit as cleanly as they should (you can indeed bolt them in that way, but it doesn't seem right for whatever reason)
I always love seeing StarTech stuff haha, I know they are kinda crap but they are from my home city here in Canada. I even interned for them a long time ago.
These racks are actually pretty decent. Definitely sturdy enough to be trustworthy.
IME, StarTech tends to nail the price/performance threshold. They're not the most premium ever, but they're accessible, and what you get for the money is a genuinely good value.
@@nickwallette6201 yeah I’d agree. They’ve saved my butt so many times
Clab, do you have a plan to maintain all this old stuff? Like if/when the memory cards in your routers, old SCSI drives, etc goes south?
Less worried about memory cards, but I'm hoping replacements like BlueSCSI come along for these faster enterprise SCSI drives someday.
@@clabretro dude that’s so sick, I love your channel so much! Top 2 for sure ❤
The Linksys stack is so high, that's poking into the next video on my queue lol
Another good cheap source for rails is ones from APC UPS systems. They are the shelf type.
I need a 72RU rack in my life now. If only I had a basement to build it in…