Lol, you just built the most complicated/advanced PBX. I just went on ebay and bought an 8 port PBX for $40. It came with all the cables and a manual. I wired it into my house phone lines so when you call my house, you get a message asking you to enter an extension and we can call from the bedroom to the basement. But this was way more fun to watch you setup.
Having been a Cisco Voice guy for 20ish years, this has been fun to watch. I’m more in sales than engineering now, but for 11 years I installed more of all of these devices than I can even count. It was a new frontier, moving from copper analog into IP.
I've tried living vicariously through your videos, but find myself searching for 20 year old Cisco gear (and IBM!)... I'll give my wife your details when she questions all the "new" gear 😂
Haha, this is awesome. Especially the Dreamcast at the end; even if the browser didn't work, at least PSO did! I can't wait to see 3745 decked out and running all of your dial-up.
I'm so glad to see you and The Serial Port venture into Homelab Dial-Up. As someone born after the age of the old internet, I was always curious about what it was like and how it truly felt to "dial in". I can't wait to see where you take this, clab. P.S: I saw that old school Apple Airport Base Station in your background, delving into the OG 802.11 Wifi, huh?
As someone who grew up with dial-up and then eventually DSL, I can tell you it was absolutely magical. Being able to do stuff like read game walkthroughs on GameFAQs was just crazy. We used to print them out and put them in binders because it was easier to use while playing PlayStation or Genesis. Instant messaging was also incredible although I only got into that after we switched to DSL. After a few years of using dial-up, and knowing faster speeds were out there, it was frustrating. Being able to watch Strong Bad emails as they were released was awesome but they took ages to load on dial-up. I remember the first time I downloaded a video game, it was Starsiege Tribes and it was something like 70MB. It took multiple sessions, and lots of pausing the download so the computer could be turned off at night, but eventually it downloaded and I remember being absolutely blown away. I played solo for ages, learning how to use the various weapons and ships... Then the first time I played multiplayer some script kiddie just floated at the top of the map with unlimited jetpack and ammo and just did automatic headshots on everyone, right through objects on the map. I couldn't figure out how I was being killed at first and then my friend told me it was someone cheating. So my first online gaming experience was also my first experience to cheaters. 😅
I'm a 34 year old Dad and Husband. I'm currently studying for my certs. I just want to say that since I discovered your Channel, having your videos on in the background has helped me study. It's not even the nostalgia, but the atmosphere your style of video gives off. No yelling or overreacting, thanks for keeping it "chill".
These adventures are such a joy. Great formula, great storyboarding, focused without being boring, well filmed, well edited, always tickle a curiosity or the ol' nostalgia bone. Thanks for continuing to share!
As a network engineer of many years who now manages a bunch of software engineers (who couldn't care less about networking), your content warms my heart.
damn that is a hell of an upgrade the 2900 are still used to this day in some offices your crazy man no one in the right mind are doing this, you right up my alley kind of guy!! keep up the good work!!
DUDE! you should run your own BBS! like, for all your subsribers, have an air-gapped long-distance-dialup BBS for us and other retro fans! that would be so Rad. Have a livestream that just shows video of whats happening on the BBS for all of us with no modem. Make Modems Cool Again!
Cisco IOS version numbers are an over-complicated subject in themselves. Since you're using older Enterprise kit, images with a "T" suffix indicate an Early Deployment release train where new features were added. The T codebase would at some point become the next "M" release train which indicates General Deployment and would thereafter receive bugfixes only. So the sequence would go (say) 12.1(1)T 12.1(2)T 12.1(3)T 12.2(1)M 12.2(2)M etc, showing 3 releases with new features being added and then only being stabilised in the M train. When 12.2(1)M is created, the T train then moved on to 12.2(1)T and new features start goign in there. The number after the T or M is a rebuild number, which indicates a bugfix rebuild of that particular release. You also had one version with something like an XA suffix, this indicates a Special release that was typically shipped just to support a new piece of hardware where they didn't want to wait for the next actual release. These are generally bad news for stability and you should get off them onto a later M or T release if possible !
Don't forget the ED suffix - 'Early Deployment', as I recall. The numbering is really screwy. The naming, at least, lets you know fairly easily what you have - ADVIPSERVICESK9 - Advanced IP Services, with Crypto. IPSERVICES would be basic routing as I recall, I seem to recall the advanced adds additional protocols - something makes me thing you need advanced for BGP, but it has been quite a while since I dealt with those. The K9 is the crypto indicator. IPVOICEK9 has voice features, but minimal routing protocol support, I think. K9 so it does include crypto. I think the UNIVERSALK9 might have required additional licensing to enable features? Like I said - been a while :D
Loving all the homelab videos. If you want to keep going down the voice rabbit hole, you could look at setting up a hunt group. That would let you dial a single number and it would ring the next available modem port. Kind of like how your ISP would be able to connect many callers on a single phone number into a bank of modems.
Huh, I'm in a different industry but never knew 100% what FXO/FXS is outside my work but that makes sense now. I work on 911 systems and we use FXO for non-emergency lines (telco gives tone) and FXS for 911 (we give tone). I was always taught O for office, S for sirens but until now didn't realize they are generic acronyms.
Dial up: You'd need 8 of these! Ethernet: You'd need 1,000 of these! (100mbps vs 100gigabit) Love your videos on this old tech! You have so much passion and it's really inspiring!! Thanks so much for your videos!
Hypothetically. I have a bunch of T1 as well. Could a IP-Serial adaptor be used to link them? T1 was a dream in my youth. I'd like to make an old school comms setup. Would you be interested in creating an isolated link o my rack here?
I really like your error explainations. It's excellent and endearing. Also great that we're in danger of learning something. It's a bit different for different parts of the world with different telephone standards.
Oh man. I watched about the first 5 minutes right when you got to the FXO/FXS part. I've done a lot with Asterisk... and its one of those things where I just love playing with that equipment. I'm going to watch the rest of the video later, but I just had to comment about that and what was going to happen. Look forward to seeing the discoveries that lead to future-you.
I’m a new viewer and I think that I’ve binge watched all of your videos - this one in particular has activated my desire to build my own dialup ISP; I’ve already bought several Cisco 2600s from Cisco and crimped my own T1 cables. Thanks for the motivation!
Thank you for this! I was inspired by your last dialup video and bought a Cisco 1760 planning to replicate your setup with ATAs. Learning about the FXS and PVDMs is even better, I should be able to do two dialup lines in 1u with the 1760 and have some WIC slots left for T1 and fast Ethernet.
Networking was much more fun back in the day before practically every thing was ethernet. Ethernet is much easier to manage and scales to ridiculous speed, but dealing with all these old telecom media types really gets the Grey beard network admin in me nostalgic.
30 years ago I was working on switching computers from a leased line (PtP) network to a "dialup" tcp/ip network using the same cables. We used a dial-in controller (can't remember the brand) and normal 56.4 modems, and it worked. One thing most people do not know you can connect two modems to each other without having to use dialup - you just have to a cross over cable, and then tell the modem that the line is up - no dial-up is required. I know it's not as fun as playing around with Cisco stuff 😊
Youre going wild. I just setup two Cisco 2901's with a T1 between them and have 1 computer on each end dialing in (using the wic-1am-v2 modems). I was even able to get a Halo lan party going between the two. I'll make a video soon about it.
This was a fun adventure. For that DNS problem for your Dreamcast, can you look at your firewall or see if you can capture that DNS traffic to see what it is trying to query? You can then set up a local DNS server and then forward that request somewhere that works. You could probably serve it a blank page and it would work. Give that a try!
Dude your stuff is as always top notch, but the Dreamcast was like a cherry on top! I never had a console as a kid, and Dreamcast always fascinated me later on. Awesome stuff, thanks for sharing! I made this comment before I saw your Dreamcast hoard! >:[
Great video, when wiring POTS lines we never reversed polarity on the in wall wiring from a DMARC / FXS. Some line cords (from the wall jack to the phone) did reverse polarity like for older sets without a polarity guard. Also I love the level of detail, keep up the good work.
Ah! These videos remind me of 99/2001, when I was 17/18 years old and I was setting up an ISP here in Brazil. I used to do callbacks so I could use the internet 24 hours a day, since the ISP paid VERY little per minute (there was no such thing as unlimited calls, we paid for each "pulse" - 4 in 4 minutes)
Great video! If you’re willing to go deeper into this rabbit hole and are looking for 56kbps modem connections, check the PVDM-12DM for your 2821 or 2900. They are high density digital modems that handles blazing speed V.92 modem calls, as long you’re feeding them calls from BRI or T1/E1 links with specific WICs. It might not be doable with a single device however, but homelabing is not a hobby about convenience.
At the beginning of my career, in 2003-4 I worked in Cisco service entitlement and I spent my days authorising replacement router modules. I recognise basically all of these devices and parts simply by their product IDs (SUP-2T, WIC-1DS, etc). I had no idea what they were at the time, so it's nice for me to be able to see what they all actually were, 20 years later.
I was just going to take a peep at this video before I had to go out... here I am 38 minutes later, just got hooked. Great job with the casual yet detailed explanations, real easy and fun to follow along. I've done dial-up before using an analog PBX, a Windows XP machine, and a PowerBook G4, but now you've kind of got me regretting not saving one of the 2811s from recycling at my old job. I think I have a new old stock 1811 in storage though, you've given me a reason to open it up and mess with it.
As someone who works for a MSP that provides voice services, we use FXS ports as ATAs all the time. Mostly just for fax lines, but occasionally an analog cordless phone or a port facing an analog intercom or paging system.
Ugh Don't get me started about the convoluted Cisco documentation. It's quite the miracle you found everything and got it working. Usually you find references to Cisco pages that don't longer exist and/or simply have false and incomplete information. Excellent video!
I setup a Cisco 2900 router to use as a Cisco PBX for Cisco IP phones for a Charter school. It’s still being used to this day! Those routers are solid built! You should try setting up a PBX and run Cisco UCME and get some Cisco IP phones for fun! (:
Do 56k. It will be A LOT more work and headache, but the extra 22.4k of throughput will make it worth it. Get an Ascend MAX (for the ISP side) and setup a Cisco router with some VICs (as the telco side), and then run a T1/PRI between them. Bonus points for demonstrating MPPP and or ISDN!
For some fun try using the aux port in the router to your computer and try and get a PPP or SLIP connection going. I used to do this a long time ago with my laptop as we often did not have Ethernet ports in our POPs. You can also connect two routers directly over the aux ports (with the right pinout) and get PPP to work. The aux port can also be used to hook up a modem for PPP or backdoor console access. It is unfortunate that this port is so often overlooked.
Imagine being a Systems Engineer back in the day. Yes the standardized form factors were great (manufacturing efficiencies)... but man did it take me a career to get customers to pay attention to the modules, and the writing on the modules, and the IOS versions. My favorite was when a customer forwarded me an exchange with our tech support. A router was reporting both power supplies as failed. The customer provided tech support the CLI response from the router. Tech support asked..... if the router was still up. To which the customer provided the show interface output.... Still have that framed and hanging on the wall.
You need to have all the modems in a hunt group so all your devices can dial the same number and they will be connected to whichever modem happens to be free.
Hey man! That cellular module.... I'm trying to really find one that works in my country, and I can't wait for you to tinker with yours! I think it's for backup Internet connections as you said. But yeah awesome job on this video!
it's probably 3g or even GSM so I doubt it'll still work in the US. Those were probably used for out of band access to the router CLI when things go wonky.
Wow. This stuff is pretty cool. I've seen some Cisco stuff for sale cheap and was thinking about buying some to play around with. Makes me think I should have a crack at it. Subbed for the journey.
I bought a cheapo 8-line small business PBX off AliExpress a few years ago for my version of this project on a budget... it worked pretty well! It was a bit janky with non-standard dialtone so about 20% of the modems I tried didnt' like it. I had it set up so that the first four ports were client ports, and if you dialled an internal extension it'd do call hunting to find the first available server port, so I only had to remember one number for dialing up to the ISP and could have multiple machines dialled up at once. It was super fun!
I have seen Cisco's 16 port modem module and I have used the module in past years for about two years. Modem ports can be used also through TCP ports. Each modem has its own TCP port number. The modem connection can be established remotely using TCP ports and a computer. The connection is then between the computer and the Cisco modem port. 👍
My setup was a Cisco 1760 with an VIC-2FXS, a VWIC-2MFT-E1-DI (E1 is the standard in Australia), and of course the obligatory PVDM module, which accepts the calls and routes them out the E1 line to the second router, a 3725 with a NM-HDV, including a full complement of PVDM modules and a VWIC-2MFT-E1-DI in its VWIC slot, and a NM-30DM in the second NM slot. The digital modems allow the full 56K downstream speed, instead of being limited to the 33.6K upstream speed of a regular analogue modem, but that NM and the digital modem cards to go with it can be quite expensive unless you happen to find one in a router and the seller doesn't know what it is (which is how I got mine). That was all a long time ago, so I can't remember exactly how it was configured, I just remember I couldn't dial directly into the digital modems, it had to go through an E1 (or T1) connection. And because I only had the one voice WIC slot in the NM-HDV module, I couldn't put the E1 card plus the FXS card into the one router and do it all on one box. Eventually I did get a 3845, which would have more than enough slots to do it all, but that was years later, after I'd disassembled that setup to use for other lab configs many times, and apparently I didn't keep a copy of the router configs, so I would've had to build it again from scratch. That said, I've enjoyed you showing me how much I've forgotten about voice configs. I do enjoy working on the older hardware, so hopefully you can get it all working on your older gear rather than that shiny "new" 2911.
I don't think you need to roll the pairs on a telephone line. They are bidirectional Tip/Ring not TX/RX. The analog signal from the line and the handset is mixed at each end by a transformer (the "hybrid"), so all you're doing is inverting the polarity of the signal. I believe that's technically wrong, although I would be surprised if most, if not all, telco equipment is made to tolerate reversed lines without degrading service, so it probably works "fine" anyway. Still, unless I'm mistaken, you don't need to do that, and shouldn't, just to ensure everything gets the signal polarity it expects. Oh, and if you install a new set of Keystone jacks, why not punch down the pairs on separate RJ11 jacks, rather than use a breakout cable? :-D
Yeah I 100% did not need to roll the pairs, realized that later lol. I have some punch downs but figured I'll change my mind eventually and the breakout cable ends up being more flexible.
wow!!! i love the dreamcast and keyboard!! and the cisco units of course!!! great video! excited to try my dreamcast!hooked up on line as well!your video made my day.....
I went through the "little netgear box" phase once too when I connected my analog phones to a VOIP provider, so I understand what the little box does. I also (it was kind of a fluke, weirdly) bought a dirt-cheap 2911 box off eBay with 2-port FXO and 2-port FXS cards in it. I have done the Cisco VOIP (converted to SIP) phones w/ Asterisk (hosted on the internet) and upstream VOIP provider thing, but didn't stick with it, was a fun experiment. I'd like to experiment with my 2911 a little bit, but I'm not sure exactly what I can do with it and only the 2-port FXS card. I have a single analog modem with a serial port, but I don't have your second (internal modem) Cisco box to play with, so I can't really connect the voice line to anything like you are doing. Is the 2911 just an analog-to-digital conversion box? It doesn't have any asterisk-like or modem functionality in it? What can I do with my 2911?
What you can do will largely be gated by what modules you have in the 2911, one interesting thing with just an FXS is if you had a SIP and PBX server somewhere, you could dial up via the FXS port in the 2911 to it? I believe you can configure the 2911 to connect calls to a SIP/PBX server - though I've never done it, take that with a grain of salt haha
Pouring out some juice to the homie Dreamcast. He lived and died soo young. The games looked awesome. Was it the timing? Sega BS? Not sure. Glad to see you got one of the little homies living his Dream.
Really happy to see content like this! This is exactly what I like to do at home myself and I'm frankly a bit surprised that there isn't more YT tech people running setups like this to be able to show off modems and old phones. I have a 2951 running in my closet myself as both a router and a telephony PBX and it works a treat! The interesting part is that I have a WIC-1AM-V2 running in my 2951 so not sure if the pages still online about this WIC are too old to show compatibility with that WIC and the 29XX routers or if I have a slightly different version of it. Did you try putting the WIC-1AM-V2 in your 2911? My 2951 is for sure showing it as a "WIC-1AM-V2" and it is working correctly.
@@clabretro Yeah, that card seems really nice! I've never seen the 8-AM before, guessing it's not compatible with my earlier 3825 router even though it has the correct slots. I know the newer routers (including the 29XX series and probably the 38XX) also have internal modem cards that you can put in the PVDM slots instead of the actual PVDMs to add modem clusters. I'm guessing those replaced the need for cards like the 8-AM but all of those I've found have been quite expensive so I ended up with just a WIC-1AM-V2 instead. Looking forward to any updates on what config you end up with eventually! 🙂
I thought meant ISPs in the 90s had T1s and a Cisco concentrator. 63 lines all in one Jack that looks like ether net. They even supported bonding 2 lines for faster speed. And would take smallish or ISDN calls.
Bro what a journey! I am going through the battle of finding the right cards to have a VOIP to PBX lab. It looks like I am not the only person on ebay buy super outdated stuff for learning.
This is great, i did the exact thing about 2 months ago except instead of using modem cards on a second router I bought an old terminal server and connected the modems to it and it to my network. I think i should find those modem cards now.... plus I really want that 4g card, use it as a backup encase my main isp goes down.
as a CCNP Voice and RS its funny to see people messing around with my daily business. I was the admin for a leisure company running resorts with small huts, we had cabinets full of this stuff, we even run our own DSLAM and Docsis system. Those stuff is cheap available on european ebay.
35:17 Wonder if it's just wants to load an HTML homepage, or some more complex file? If it's the former you might be able to setup local DNS and redirect to a web server you control.
Very neat. There's an internal 128KiB Flash memory that the Dreamcast uses a part of to store the Dream Passport, Dreamkey, and PlanetWeb browser settings, which is why it persists without a memory unit. I'm working on a period-correct online Dreamcast game a little earlier than what you're going for and have a similar setup, though only the modem part with an AdTran TSU 600 and a Portmaster 3 for connecting to the network. When looking for a backup unit for the TSU recently, it appears that there may be some restrictions on exporting communication equipment outside the US, I opted for a Cisco 3662 and a Lucent Max 6000 MX60 (E1 instead of T1, too). The Max is failing to power on, so until that gets fixed, I have no idea if the replacement will work.
I’m unsure if they did that Cisco strikes me as a company who would have sold ISP equipment at that time so that business customers would have Cisco at both ends for a higher reliability
I know that hardware was donated, which is awesome. About how much would have this lab cost on eBay realistically? I have a bit of a used hardware lab problem already but it doesn’t have voice at all… This looks like so much fun! All hardware in the video plus cards… over a grand? Just about a grand? Just under a grand? Thank you love your channel!
Way under a grand. You can get a single-line setup going in something like that 2600 for like $60 or less, assuming you have computers with modems. I haven't priced out the 2900 but it certainly isn't necessary, older gear can use VIC cards and you could get a voice setup going pretty cheap.
You can do this with a netopia modem it can do dial up into . It's nice. One ata needed I even have it when you pick up a line it dials out . So cool tho
When I was young I had a 486 and a Pentium 2, I managed to connect both modem to modem thru hyperterminal using AT commands, something like ATDT123 to dial from a machine and ATA to answer from the other and they connected without speed lost, don't remember exactly if those where the AT commands but maybe this information can help approach the thing using only the 8 port modem, and maybe do something manually (and maybe remotly) in the Cisco machine to answer the call from a machine, the AT command I think are called Hayes commands or something like that, if you look only AT commands you will mostly find GSM commands that can be diffent from what are you trying to accomplish. Hope this help.
I am impressed by how much attention my 5yr old son paid to your video. And he asked me if we could use a modem with my Cisco routers. Great video
ha that's great
you raised him well :). Keep doiing what you're doing!
And both of us live in a same world which I didn't have slightest idea what a modem is when i was 5 😂
@@alisharifian535 my son knows these things because I've been in the business since he was a few months old. And he even came to work with me.
Lol, you just built the most complicated/advanced PBX.
I just went on ebay and bought an 8 port PBX for $40. It came with all the cables and a manual. I wired it into my house phone lines so when you call my house, you get a message asking you to enter an extension and we can call from the bedroom to the basement.
But this was way more fun to watch you setup.
nice! yeah I decided to take the long route haha
Жена тебя еще не проклянула за это ?
Having been a Cisco Voice guy for 20ish years, this has been fun to watch. I’m more in sales than engineering now, but for 11 years I installed more of all of these devices than I can even count. It was a new frontier, moving from copper analog into IP.
very cool!
CUCM is now obsolete, and it's successor is Cisco Unity.
next: Home DOCSIS cable network
oh yeah
A CMTS in the lab would be fantastic. A bit pricey but fun.
we need this video.
I would LOVE to see this
at a certain point you’ll have a whole-ass headend. add voip and you’re running triple play
just noticed you have 33.6k subscribers... perfect timing.
haha!
I've tried living vicariously through your videos, but find myself searching for 20 year old Cisco gear (and IBM!)... I'll give my wife your details when she questions all the "new" gear 😂
haha
Haha, this is awesome. Especially the Dreamcast at the end; even if the browser didn't work, at least PSO did! I can't wait to see 3745 decked out and running all of your dial-up.
I'm so glad to see you and The Serial Port venture into Homelab Dial-Up. As someone born after the age of the old internet, I was always curious about what it was like and how it truly felt to "dial in". I can't wait to see where you take this, clab.
P.S: I saw that old school Apple Airport Base Station in your background, delving into the OG 802.11 Wifi, huh?
glad you're enjoying it! and yup I'll mess with that airport eventual
As someone who grew up with dial-up and then eventually DSL, I can tell you it was absolutely magical. Being able to do stuff like read game walkthroughs on GameFAQs was just crazy. We used to print them out and put them in binders because it was easier to use while playing PlayStation or Genesis. Instant messaging was also incredible although I only got into that after we switched to DSL. After a few years of using dial-up, and knowing faster speeds were out there, it was frustrating. Being able to watch Strong Bad emails as they were released was awesome but they took ages to load on dial-up. I remember the first time I downloaded a video game, it was Starsiege Tribes and it was something like 70MB. It took multiple sessions, and lots of pausing the download so the computer could be turned off at night, but eventually it downloaded and I remember being absolutely blown away. I played solo for ages, learning how to use the various weapons and ships... Then the first time I played multiplayer some script kiddie just floated at the top of the map with unlimited jetpack and ammo and just did automatic headshots on everyone, right through objects on the map. I couldn't figure out how I was being killed at first and then my friend told me it was someone cheating. So my first online gaming experience was also my first experience to cheaters. 😅
I'm a 34 year old Dad and Husband. I'm currently studying for my certs. I just want to say that since I discovered your Channel, having your videos on in the background has helped me study. It's not even the nostalgia, but the atmosphere your style of video gives off. No yelling or overreacting, thanks for keeping it "chill".
glad to hear that!
These adventures are such a joy. Great formula, great storyboarding, focused without being boring, well filmed, well edited, always tickle a curiosity or the ol' nostalgia bone. Thanks for continuing to share!
As a network engineer of many years who now manages a bunch of software engineers (who couldn't care less about networking), your content warms my heart.
damn that is a hell of an upgrade the 2900 are still used to this day in some offices your crazy man no one in the right mind are doing this, you right up my alley kind of guy!! keep up the good work!!
DUDE! you should run your own BBS! like, for all your subsribers, have an air-gapped long-distance-dialup BBS for us and other retro fans! that would be so Rad. Have a livestream that just shows video of whats happening on the BBS for all of us with no modem. Make Modems Cool Again!
@21:38 - You don’t need to swap the pair colours (sorry spelling from England) they are not transmit and receive on one pair. Loved this content :-)
Cisco IOS version numbers are an over-complicated subject in themselves. Since you're using older Enterprise kit, images with a "T" suffix indicate an Early Deployment release train where new features were added. The T codebase would at some point become the next "M" release train which indicates General Deployment and would thereafter receive bugfixes only. So the sequence would go (say) 12.1(1)T 12.1(2)T 12.1(3)T 12.2(1)M 12.2(2)M etc, showing 3 releases with new features being added and then only being stabilised in the M train. When 12.2(1)M is created, the T train then moved on to 12.2(1)T and new features start goign in there. The number after the T or M is a rebuild number, which indicates a bugfix rebuild of that particular release. You also had one version with something like an XA suffix, this indicates a Special release that was typically shipped just to support a new piece of hardware where they didn't want to wait for the next actual release. These are generally bad news for stability and you should get off them onto a later M or T release if possible !
Don't forget the ED suffix - 'Early Deployment', as I recall. The numbering is really screwy. The naming, at least, lets you know fairly easily what you have - ADVIPSERVICESK9 - Advanced IP Services, with Crypto. IPSERVICES would be basic routing as I recall, I seem to recall the advanced adds additional protocols - something makes me thing you need advanced for BGP, but it has been quite a while since I dealt with those. The K9 is the crypto indicator. IPVOICEK9 has voice features, but minimal routing protocol support, I think. K9 so it does include crypto. I think the UNIVERSALK9 might have required additional licensing to enable features? Like I said - been a while :D
Loving all the homelab videos.
If you want to keep going down the voice rabbit hole, you could look at setting up a hunt group. That would let you dial a single number and it would ring the next available modem port. Kind of like how your ISP would be able to connect many callers on a single phone number into a bank of modems.
That phone/network wiring was so jank it brings back fond memories. Thank you!
Huh, I'm in a different industry but never knew 100% what FXO/FXS is outside my work but that makes sense now. I work on 911 systems and we use FXO for non-emergency lines (telco gives tone) and FXS for 911 (we give tone). I was always taught O for office, S for sirens but until now didn't realize they are generic acronyms.
Dial up: You'd need 8 of these!
Ethernet: You'd need 1,000 of these! (100mbps vs 100gigabit)
Love your videos on this old tech! You have so much passion and it's really inspiring!! Thanks so much for your videos!
Glad you like them!
I have a TENOR AX. Now you have given me motivation to use it
Oh my god, the more I watch the more I'm getting turned on
Hypothetically. I have a bunch of T1 as well. Could a IP-Serial adaptor be used to link them? T1 was a dream in my youth. I'd like to make an old school comms setup. Would you be interested in creating an isolated link o my rack here?
I really like your error explainations. It's excellent and endearing. Also great that we're in danger of learning something. It's a bit different for different parts of the world with different telephone standards.
Nice! On the dreamcast, your modem settings are centrally stored to 128KB flash (same place your language selection, time zone etc. are). Great video!
that cable modem brought up some memories. cable internet is neat because it's basically IP over MPEG, which is a very odd thing to say.
Remember haxoware ?
Oh man. I watched about the first 5 minutes right when you got to the FXO/FXS part. I've done a lot with Asterisk... and its one of those things where I just love playing with that equipment. I'm going to watch the rest of the video later, but I just had to comment about that and what was going to happen. Look forward to seeing the discoveries that lead to future-you.
I’m a new viewer and I think that I’ve binge watched all of your videos - this one in particular has activated my desire to build my own dialup ISP; I’ve already bought several Cisco 2600s from Cisco and crimped my own T1 cables. Thanks for the motivation!
that's awesome!
Thank you for this! I was inspired by your last dialup video and bought a Cisco 1760 planning to replicate your setup with ATAs. Learning about the FXS and PVDMs is even better, I should be able to do two dialup lines in 1u with the 1760 and have some WIC slots left for T1 and fast Ethernet.
Networking was much more fun back in the day before practically every thing was ethernet. Ethernet is much easier to manage and scales to ridiculous speed, but dealing with all these old telecom media types really gets the Grey beard network admin in me nostalgic.
30 years ago I was working on switching computers from a leased line (PtP) network to a "dialup" tcp/ip network using the same cables. We used a dial-in controller (can't remember the brand) and normal 56.4 modems, and it worked. One thing most people do not know you can connect two modems to each other without having to use dialup - you just have to a cross over cable, and then tell the modem that the line is up - no dial-up is required.
I know it's not as fun as playing around with Cisco stuff 😊
Youre going wild. I just setup two Cisco 2901's with a T1 between them and have 1 computer on each end dialing in (using the wic-1am-v2 modems). I was even able to get a Halo lan party going between the two. I'll make a video soon about it.
This was a fun adventure. For that DNS problem for your Dreamcast, can you look at your firewall or see if you can capture that DNS traffic to see what it is trying to query? You can then set up a local DNS server and then forward that request somewhere that works. You could probably serve it a blank page and it would work. Give that a try!
I think something like that will be the next step!
Beautiful. It's wonderful now how we can just live out our dialiest of dialtone dreams that we could never do as a kid in the 90's and 2000's.
Dude your stuff is as always top notch, but the Dreamcast was like a cherry on top! I never had a console as a kid, and Dreamcast always fascinated me later on. Awesome stuff, thanks for sharing!
I made this comment before I saw your Dreamcast hoard! >:[
haha. they're in rooouuugh shape. lots of broken gdroms
Great video, when wiring POTS lines we never reversed polarity on the in wall wiring from a DMARC / FXS. Some line cords (from the wall jack to the phone) did reverse polarity like for older sets without a polarity guard. Also I love the level of detail, keep up the good work.
Ah! These videos remind me of 99/2001, when I was 17/18 years old and I was setting up an ISP here in Brazil.
I used to do callbacks so I could use the internet 24 hours a day, since the ISP paid VERY little per minute (there was no such thing as unlimited calls, we paid for each "pulse" - 4 in 4 minutes)
Great video! If you’re willing to go deeper into this rabbit hole and are looking for 56kbps modem connections, check the PVDM-12DM for your 2821 or 2900.
They are high density digital modems that handles blazing speed V.92 modem calls, as long you’re feeding them calls from BRI or T1/E1 links with specific WICs.
It might not be doable with a single device however, but homelabing is not a hobby about convenience.
Loved this video. Reminds me of that short era where I ran not exactly the same hardware at home to connect my home phone to a SIP provider. Very cool
At the beginning of my career, in 2003-4 I worked in Cisco service entitlement and I spent my days authorising replacement router modules. I recognise basically all of these devices and parts simply by their product IDs (SUP-2T, WIC-1DS, etc). I had no idea what they were at the time, so it's nice for me to be able to see what they all actually were, 20 years later.
I was just going to take a peep at this video before I had to go out... here I am 38 minutes later, just got hooked. Great job with the casual yet detailed explanations, real easy and fun to follow along. I've done dial-up before using an analog PBX, a Windows XP machine, and a PowerBook G4, but now you've kind of got me regretting not saving one of the 2811s from recycling at my old job. I think I have a new old stock 1811 in storage though, you've given me a reason to open it up and mess with it.
That ending with the Dreamcasts caught me so off guard lmao
Oh maan.. you have to do a lab tour some day.. amazing content as always
As someone who works for a MSP that provides voice services, we use FXS ports as ATAs all the time. Mostly just for fax lines, but occasionally an analog cordless phone or a port facing an analog intercom or paging system.
Ugh Don't get me started about the convoluted Cisco documentation. It's quite the miracle you found everything and got it working. Usually you find references to Cisco pages that don't longer exist and/or simply have false and incomplete information. Excellent video!
I setup a Cisco 2900 router to use as a Cisco PBX for Cisco IP phones for a Charter school. It’s still being used to this day! Those routers are solid built! You should try setting up a PBX and run Cisco UCME and get some Cisco IP phones for fun! (:
Okay I think it is officially time, you need to use (existing?) phone lines in the house and setup a local phone or intercom system.
No existing... but plenty of cat5e 😏
Well this was an unforseen blast from the past with the dreamcast - a little bit from now, someone will hire you as chief dial-up officer😂
Do 56k. It will be A LOT more work and headache, but the extra 22.4k of throughput will make it worth it. Get an Ascend MAX (for the ISP side) and setup a Cisco router with some VICs (as the telco side), and then run a T1/PRI between them. Bonus points for demonstrating MPPP and or ISDN!
always interesting to see you mess around with some older hardware, i look forward to the upcoming videos
For some fun try using the aux port in the router to your computer and try and get a PPP or SLIP connection going. I used to do this a long time ago with my laptop as we often did not have Ethernet ports in our POPs. You can also connect two routers directly over the aux ports (with the right pinout) and get PPP to work. The aux port can also be used to hook up a modem for PPP or backdoor console access. It is unfortunate that this port is so often overlooked.
36:56: Wow that's a heck of a lot of Dreamcasts!
Imagine being a Systems Engineer back in the day. Yes the standardized form factors were great (manufacturing efficiencies)... but man did it take me a career to get customers to pay attention to the modules, and the writing on the modules, and the IOS versions.
My favorite was when a customer forwarded me an exchange with our tech support. A router was reporting both power supplies as failed. The customer provided tech support the CLI response from the router. Tech support asked..... if the router was still up. To which the customer provided the show interface output....
Still have that framed and hanging on the wall.
Aaah. A great final video before going to bed, educational, but I doubt a lot will actually stay in my head. 😂
Very cool vid. Hard to belive PSO still has servers you can connect too. Love it.
18:33 -- More detail the better. It's great to follow along.
You need to have all the modems in a hunt group so all your devices can dial the same number and they will be connected to whichever modem happens to be free.
that's the plan!
Hey man! That cellular module.... I'm trying to really find one that works in my country, and I can't wait for you to tinker with yours! I think it's for backup Internet connections as you said. But yeah awesome job on this video!
it's probably 3g or even GSM so I doubt it'll still work in the US. Those were probably used for out of band access to the router CLI when things go wonky.
@@v12alpine they made 4G LTE EHWIC modules too.... So maybe it will still work.
My first hands on with Cisco was on a 2900-series. Good memories!
I'm nostalgic for rooting around in IOS now. Love this video!
Wow. This stuff is pretty cool. I've seen some Cisco stuff for sale cheap and was thinking about buying some to play around with. Makes me think I should have a crack at it. Subbed for the journey.
I bought a cheapo 8-line small business PBX off AliExpress a few years ago for my version of this project on a budget... it worked pretty well! It was a bit janky with non-standard dialtone so about 20% of the modems I tried didnt' like it. I had it set up so that the first four ports were client ports, and if you dialled an internal extension it'd do call hunting to find the first available server port, so I only had to remember one number for dialing up to the ISP and could have multiple machines dialled up at once. It was super fun!
I have seen Cisco's 16 port modem module and I have used the module in past years for about two years. Modem ports can be used also through TCP ports. Each modem has its own TCP port number. The modem connection can be established remotely using TCP ports and a computer. The connection is then between the computer and the Cisco modem port. 👍
nice!
My setup was a Cisco 1760 with an VIC-2FXS, a VWIC-2MFT-E1-DI (E1 is the standard in Australia), and of course the obligatory PVDM module, which accepts the calls and routes them out the E1 line to the second router, a 3725 with a NM-HDV, including a full complement of PVDM modules and a VWIC-2MFT-E1-DI in its VWIC slot, and a NM-30DM in the second NM slot. The digital modems allow the full 56K downstream speed, instead of being limited to the 33.6K upstream speed of a regular analogue modem, but that NM and the digital modem cards to go with it can be quite expensive unless you happen to find one in a router and the seller doesn't know what it is (which is how I got mine).
That was all a long time ago, so I can't remember exactly how it was configured, I just remember I couldn't dial directly into the digital modems, it had to go through an E1 (or T1) connection. And because I only had the one voice WIC slot in the NM-HDV module, I couldn't put the E1 card plus the FXS card into the one router and do it all on one box. Eventually I did get a 3845, which would have more than enough slots to do it all, but that was years later, after I'd disassembled that setup to use for other lab configs many times, and apparently I didn't keep a copy of the router configs, so I would've had to build it again from scratch.
That said, I've enjoyed you showing me how much I've forgotten about voice configs. I do enjoy working on the older hardware, so hopefully you can get it all working on your older gear rather than that shiny "new" 2911.
Dont stress about the FXS/FXO ports.
I've been a telephony engineer for 20 years, and when I started I got it wrong for years!
I don't think you need to roll the pairs on a telephone line. They are bidirectional Tip/Ring not TX/RX. The analog signal from the line and the handset is mixed at each end by a transformer (the "hybrid"), so all you're doing is inverting the polarity of the signal. I believe that's technically wrong, although I would be surprised if most, if not all, telco equipment is made to tolerate reversed lines without degrading service, so it probably works "fine" anyway. Still, unless I'm mistaken, you don't need to do that, and shouldn't, just to ensure everything gets the signal polarity it expects.
Oh, and if you install a new set of Keystone jacks, why not punch down the pairs on separate RJ11 jacks, rather than use a breakout cable? :-D
Yeah I 100% did not need to roll the pairs, realized that later lol. I have some punch downs but figured I'll change my mind eventually and the breakout cable ends up being more flexible.
awesome and outstanding! this is really the content I subscribed for! thank you as always!
wow!!! i love the dreamcast and keyboard!! and the cisco units of course!!! great video! excited to try my dreamcast!hooked up on line as well!your video made my day.....
Job well done, Colby
Fun fact I used to tear those 2911 out from CVS locations and replace them with newer dell emc or silicon routers.
I went through the "little netgear box" phase once too when I connected my analog phones to a VOIP provider, so I understand what the little box does.
I also (it was kind of a fluke, weirdly) bought a dirt-cheap 2911 box off eBay with 2-port FXO and 2-port FXS cards in it.
I have done the Cisco VOIP (converted to SIP) phones w/ Asterisk (hosted on the internet) and upstream VOIP provider thing, but didn't stick with it, was a fun experiment.
I'd like to experiment with my 2911 a little bit, but I'm not sure exactly what I can do with it and only the 2-port FXS card. I have a single analog modem with a serial port, but I don't have your second (internal modem) Cisco box to play with, so I can't really connect the voice line to anything like you are doing. Is the 2911 just an analog-to-digital conversion box? It doesn't have any asterisk-like or modem functionality in it? What can I do with my 2911?
What you can do will largely be gated by what modules you have in the 2911, one interesting thing with just an FXS is if you had a SIP and PBX server somewhere, you could dial up via the FXS port in the 2911 to it? I believe you can configure the 2911 to connect calls to a SIP/PBX server - though I've never done it, take that with a grain of salt haha
So clunky... Says the Man with a Dial-Up ISP in his basement... LOLS
😉
Pouring out some juice to the homie Dreamcast. He lived and died soo young. The games looked awesome. Was it the timing? Sega BS? Not sure. Glad to see you got one of the little homies living his Dream.
Really happy to see content like this! This is exactly what I like to do at home myself and I'm frankly a bit surprised that there isn't more YT tech people running setups like this to be able to show off modems and old phones. I have a 2951 running in my closet myself as both a router and a telephony PBX and it works a treat! The interesting part is that I have a WIC-1AM-V2 running in my 2951 so not sure if the pages still online about this WIC are too old to show compatibility with that WIC and the 29XX routers or if I have a slightly different version of it. Did you try putting the WIC-1AM-V2 in your 2911? My 2951 is for sure showing it as a "WIC-1AM-V2" and it is working correctly.
very cool, and thank you! you know I bet it'd be fine in there but I didn't even bother because in the end I'll be using that 8-AM somewhere else haha
@@clabretro Yeah, that card seems really nice! I've never seen the 8-AM before, guessing it's not compatible with my earlier 3825 router even though it has the correct slots. I know the newer routers (including the 29XX series and probably the 38XX) also have internal modem cards that you can put in the PVDM slots instead of the actual PVDMs to add modem clusters. I'm guessing those replaced the need for cards like the 8-AM but all of those I've found have been quite expensive so I ended up with just a WIC-1AM-V2 instead. Looking forward to any updates on what config you end up with eventually! 🙂
Oh no! Now I know what I am doing this summer! .... just what my retro collection needs lol
I thought meant ISPs in the 90s had T1s and a Cisco concentrator. 63 lines all in one Jack that looks like ether net.
They even supported bonding 2 lines for faster speed. And would take smallish or ISDN calls.
The 2900 series is still super common in installs I see. Honestly not my favourite, but it's fine. Haha
35:40 maybe tap the network uplink with wireshark and see what it's trying to connect to!
Bro what a journey! I am going through the battle of finding the right cards to have a VOIP to PBX lab. It looks like I am not the only person on ebay buy super outdated stuff for learning.
i so remember dialup internet from 2003-2004 i use to use AOL and MSN dialup back then oh boy i miss those days
This is great, i did the exact thing about 2 months ago except instead of using modem cards on a second router I bought an old terminal server and connected the modems to it and it to my network. I think i should find those modem cards now....
plus I really want that 4g card, use it as a backup encase my main isp goes down.
as a CCNP Voice and RS its funny to see people messing around with my daily business. I was the admin for a leisure company running resorts with small huts, we had cabinets full of this stuff, we even run our own DSLAM and Docsis system. Those stuff is cheap available on european ebay.
Around year 2000 i worked on a 3600 with 2x30 isdn lines 🤓👍
Dial up Cisco 681 for work from home and Cisco 801 for costumer support
Those rj45 to 11 splitters exist :)
35:17 Wonder if it's just wants to load an HTML homepage, or some more complex file? If it's the former you might be able to setup local DNS and redirect to a web server you control.
Was very sad to hear "two of them" but not see two lovely grey kittens
Yes, two of them (CRD) 😹😹
Very neat. There's an internal 128KiB Flash memory that the Dreamcast uses a part of to store the Dream Passport, Dreamkey, and PlanetWeb browser settings, which is why it persists without a memory unit.
I'm working on a period-correct online Dreamcast game a little earlier than what you're going for and have a similar setup, though only the modem part with an AdTran TSU 600 and a Portmaster 3 for connecting to the network.
When looking for a backup unit for the TSU recently, it appears that there may be some restrictions on exporting communication equipment outside the US, I opted for a Cisco 3662 and a Lucent Max 6000 MX60 (E1 instead of T1, too). The Max is failing to power on, so until that gets fixed, I have no idea if the replacement will work.
Very nice. can you share your config for those that want to replicate this setup?
Very impressed!
You create some awesome videos!! 🤘
I’m unsure if they did that Cisco strikes me as a company who would have sold ISP equipment at that time so that business customers would have Cisco at both ends for a higher reliability
I know that hardware was donated, which is awesome. About how much would have this lab cost on eBay realistically? I have a bit of a used hardware lab problem already but it doesn’t have voice at all… This looks like so much fun! All hardware in the video plus cards… over a grand? Just about a grand? Just under a grand? Thank you love your channel!
Way under a grand. You can get a single-line setup going in something like that 2600 for like $60 or less, assuming you have computers with modems. I haven't priced out the 2900 but it certainly isn't necessary, older gear can use VIC cards and you could get a voice setup going pretty cheap.
@@clabretroThank you! I’ll check it out. My wife is not going to be happy lol.
😂
what a coincidence, I'm setting up my own home dial up server too!
Yes! As mentioned. Please do a t1 trunking video.
I love Cisco stuff 😍😍😍
Amazing work here. Great video.
Despite some minor misunderstandings of the technology, you did okay. I'm so glad I don't work with this stuff anymore.
You're simulating the world in here
You can do this with a netopia modem it can do dial up into . It's nice. One ata needed I even have it when you pick up a line it dials out . So cool tho
Very good video! Regards from Poland
Love your videos. How the heck do you learn and get hold of all these epic gear? Here in Sweden they seem mad expensive.
Yess dial up to find out how to get past that difficult spot in Ecco Defender of the Future!
When I was young I had a 486 and a Pentium 2, I managed to connect both modem to modem thru hyperterminal using AT commands, something like ATDT123 to dial from a machine and ATA to answer from the other and they connected without speed lost, don't remember exactly if those where the AT commands but maybe this information can help approach the thing using only the 8 port modem, and maybe do something manually (and maybe remotly) in the Cisco machine to answer the call from a machine, the AT command I think are called Hayes commands or something like that, if you look only AT commands you will mostly find GSM commands that can be diffent from what are you trying to accomplish. Hope this help.
You should get a VG224. Great video as alyways.