Cisco 7204 VXR Router

[@mtimmsj]

24 year Cisco employee here. I supported the 7200's in the early to mid 2000's as part of the San Jose TAC escalation team. Internally VXR stood for Voice eXchange Router. The source of that was an internal document that I can not share (sorry). You might be asking what Voice eXchange Router meant, well the midplane is more advanced than just being higher bandwidth, it has support for switching DS-0 timeslots across the midplane to each port adapter. The press release for the VXR (can still be found online) and it states, "In addition, the VXR midplane includes a Multiservice Interchange (MIX), which supports switching of DS-0 time slots via MIX interconnects across the midplane to each port adapter slot. The MIX in the Cisco 7200 VXR provides the ability to switch DS-0 time slots between multichannel T1 and E1 interfaces, much like a digital cross connect or an add-drop multiplexer. In the future, this will enable the Cisco 7200 VXR to switch DS-0 voice channels on a T1/E1 interface on one port adapter to and from a separate voice processing port adapter. It will also enable DS-0's to be switched through the Cisco 7200 VXR without any processing, a requirement in certain voice configurations."

[@mtimmsj]

I just remembered I have a 7206 VXR midplane on my shelf. According to a handwritten tag still on it, it was a "Gold Board" that was down rev'd. The engineering on that board was pretty amazing. The board itself is 3.5 mm thick and looks to have between 6 and 8 layers - but my eyesight isn't great these days so I could be wrong on this. The midplane was built like a tank, it is heavier than it looks. When you pick it up the weight is a bit surprising. The alignment of the I/O controller and NPE/NSE cards is pretty critical because there are so many pins, the connector design actually handles the alignment with guides built right into the connectors. My recollection is that the 7206 mid-plane has 6 pci to pci bridges, one for each port adapter.

[@clabretro]

Very cool, thanks for all the info! I had a hunch that one of the names with "voice" in it might be the right one because of that press release. Very awesome to hear it from the source. Eventually I'll get one of these apart (which doesn't seem easy) and be able to have a look at a midplane in person. I think it'll be the VXR, one of it's fans is starting to develop some bearing noise. Thanks for watching and commenting!

[@unavailablenumbers]

@@mtimmsj Oh, hey, guess that means I am okay to share some of it now! (Ain't no NDA like a Cisco NDA.) I'm one of the *externals* who got to see that document. Specifically the one that had the GSM MICAs and pre-NPE4. No, not the VOXD's. The non-public ones that limited you to a single PRI for the whole chassis. The VXR doesn't have a 6x6 though; it's actually a 2x3 64/50MHz or 2x3 64/66MHz, which is why the port budget must be so strictly adhered to. It's only ever mentioned in the NPE-G1 documentation though (and some non-public stuff with the uBRs, IIRC.)

[@videosuperhighway7655]

@@mtimmsjI still have one left still in use at work and old ass 6509 switches.

[@Blackadder75]

i read all of that twice and I have no idea what it means, but I saved it as an excellent example of tech lingo

[@mtimmsj]

Ping success rate of 80% for your tftp server occurs because the first ping request goes through arp resolution to know the l2 next hop. Once arp resolves the other 4 requests get responses and are successful resulting in a 4/5 success rate or 80%.

[@clabretro]

ah makes sense!

[@chaseohara4781]

Yupp! That's why any subsequent pings will be 5/5.

[@SoundOfWaveform]

These are very good routers. As a network engineer I scream internally seeing them in an enterprise environment. They do still pop up in closets rarely in extremely neglected networks. I love seeing them taken up by collectors though. They are truly a part of networking history.

[@SoundOfWaveform]

Oh and regarding the comment of received messages you can do a "no logging console" in global configuration mode to stop that.

[@nikgolinar4378]

@@SoundOfWaveformor “logging synchronous” to make it not break up the line you’re typing

[@acorredorv]

Last time I worked with them was in 2012, we were decommissioning most of them and replacing them with ASR1K, a few were just getting RAM upgrades to keep them running until we could get an ASR1K in their place. It was not unusual to find units with uptimes over 5 years, scary stuff! Reloading units that old was always a gamble, sometimes they never booted again. Honestly, they gave me so many headaches back then that I do not miss them, but they were a solid, reliable platform.

[@ricsip]

​@@acorredorv you just literally said that they were stable and reliable. Then why did you have headache about them?

[@TheStefanskoglund1]

@@ricsip The normal thing - i wants things to be less than 3 years .... but then we are gonna have to start planning the replacement as soon as the device is connected in our network ....

[@nikgolinar4378]

35:30 you can apply a “logging synchronous” command to fix that, which still spits out the error message but doesnt break up your line of input

[@chazchaz101]

Yup, that's one of the first things I do when setting up a serial console connection to a Cisco device. It makes it retype your input on the line after it logs something. Assuming these are the same as newer models, you'll have to enter 'line con 0' to get into the serial console context followed by 'logging synchronous'. I'm not sure if it applies to IOS versions this old, but another thing I like to set on the serial and management vty lines is 'transport preferred none' which prevents the long pause after hitting enter on a misspelled or nonexistent command. By default IOS treats an unknown command as a DNS name tries to look up the IP address and telnet to it.🤦

[@chase2496]

@@chazchaz101 I'm at the point where I automatically do the following upon seeing a Router> or Switch> prompt conf t line con 0 logging syn exit no ip domain lookup do wr

[@georeb7040]

​@chase2496 just do 'transport preferred none' instead of no ip that way you can still ping FQDN

[@chase2496]

@@georeb7040 learned something new!

[@mal0ko]

I just do a "no logging console", and just do a "logging buffer 10240". The reason is, if I want to view logs I will check the logs, I dont want them displaying in my console session, even with the synchronous, it is still distracting.

[@therandomtoaster__]

It’s a good day when clabretro posts

[@423tech]

This was fun and frustrating to watch! Only because I couldn't tell you how to fix some of the problems you ran into! I still work a lot with T1/ISDN based technology with phone systems that use PRIs. You should consider getting an older PBX for your house to learn and play with, I think you'd enjoy it. Feel free to reach out to me if you want recommendations.

[@clabretro]

haha I figured it'd be that way. PBX is on the list!

[@buttercool1240]

I was late with my comment.. @423tech beat me to it. Def get a PBX!

[@RowanHawkins]

If you want pbx that still has modern support I would suggest dialogic D41 boards which can be had from 16 bit ISA to PCIExpress. PCIE only support chaining 4 8port T1 cards (even though their link cable has 6 positions) but a past employeer filled the pci and isa versions in 23 slot induustrial chassis. So each phone switch supported 44 T1 circuits. We had call center customers with close to 100 individual T1s into 3 systems. The dialogic boards multiplex 2 T1 into a single 8C jack and give you dongles, but if you have a 5e panel kicking around you can wire it up to do the conversion in a more stable way that is easier to troubleshoot and manage.

[@colinstu]

@@clabretro dangerous rabbit hole to go down is watching The Nortel Guy on here. Sort by most viewed first.

I still got a more recent Dialogic Card laying around (4xBRI) with absolutely no computer to plug it in, but I really enjoyed working with those so maybe I'll do a retro ISDN setup sometime...

[@chaseohara4781]

Omg just jumped into RIP instead of using a static routing statement. Legend. 🤣

[@clabretro]

😆

[@v12alpine]

First time I ever saw RIP in use. Always wondered who the heck used it LOL

[@ledon26656]

Came here to say the same thing. As soon as I saw his topology I thought "oh a simple static route would do nicely here for routing" and I also assumed it would be in line with his other networking knowledge (which is well beyond your average IT person, but less than a CCNA for example). But no, he goes straight for a dynamic routing protocol RIPv2, well impressed! We still have to study RIP in college while doing networking (I did 2 years ago). We still need to learn about a lot of out of date or obsolete protocols and technology from the era in the video, because it's important for context and to then better understand what came after.

[@nickwallette6201]

LOL -- RIP is like the proof-of-concept routing protocol. Nobody ever uses it, because there's always a better option. But it's probably the first protocol the developers built on a new routing platform just to test functionality of the entire stack. It would be handed to an intern as a training mission. :-)

[@georgemachappy]

As a network engineer who used to have four of these as lab fodder, seeing this series is my Cocomelon. Looking forward to seeing all of these old WAN/LAN technologies. I entered the industry too late to have to configure most of this stuff in production environments.

[@kpanic23]

The reason you weren't able to reach your TFTP server via the T1 link is that the TFTP VM has no route back to the lab network. It would send its replies to its default gateway, which probably tries routing it out into the internet since it hasn't a route either. Quick and dirty fix would be adding manual routes to the TFTP VM.

[@brantregare]

YES! Exactly. The tftp server has no way to get there. At least 3 solutions: 1 setup static route on tftp server (makes the RIP setup on the remote useless as you must configure every machine you want to reply individually). 2 setup static route on tftp servers network router (better, makes any machine in the tftp server network able to respond). 3 setup RIP on tftp servers network router. It is likely best to use option 2.

[@dingo596]

@@brantregareI have done that and it creates an asymmetric routing loop. Packets come into the network from an IP and leave from another. It's not necessarily a problem but can be confusing and modern routers/firewalls will drop asymmetrical connections by default. The best solution is to create another point to point network between the Ubiquiti and VXR routers.

[@clabretro]

interesting! that makes total sense

[@brantregare]

@@clabretroI would like to add why option 3 is not recommended . It makes your internet router advertise routes you may not want advertised. Option 2 is the better choice. RIP is fine for fully controlled/defined local routing. Once you add internet, RIP is a security risk waiting to happen. Do not go that route, pun intended.

[@tom23rd]

I was shocked that anyone would use rip specifically for that reason. Plus youre all Cisco there, could use eigrp

[@fordayinlife]

I have like 50 of these in a storage room, i cannot believe people are so interested in this lmao. Congrats man.

[@gordoncreAtive]

"So I got this VXR because I saw it in Clabretro's video" Don't get me started on how much watching your videos costs me. I now own almost a whole server rack of ancient Cisco (and related) stuff because of you.

[@clabretro]

beautiful

[@thebearontheroof]

In 2005 I had an internship at the Cisco TAC facility in RTP working in "Customer Advocacy Lab Operations", which meant we spent all day, every day doing "network recreations": when a Cisco support engineer couldn't solve a customer's problem, they called our group of 19 year-olds to build a scale model of it in our datacenter. We had racks on wheels holding hundreds of line modules, interface cards, router engines, hardware upgrades, power supplies, and on and on and on, every Cisco SKU that was currently supported was either racked up and powered by the dozen, or available to pull from storage. Anyway thanks for triggering a ton of flashbacks; apparently there are still parts of my brain fully dedicated to memorizing Cisco VXR hardware compatibility matrices and old-school Cisco IOS configuration commands.

[@clabretro]

very cool!

[@Nate-hf8hm]

I genuinely said "yes!" in public when i saw this video posted 😆

[@clabretro]

😂😂

[@KJ7BZC]

Thanks for the mention, I really appreciate it! In terms of the syslog messages getting in the way of your typing, go to "line con 0" in the configuration, and enable "logging synchronous". This makes it print a newline followed by whatever you had already typed at the prompt after the syslog message shows. Also yeah double check your "config-register" and make sure it's set to 0x2102, if it's set to another value it is likely set to startup with a default configuration regardless of what's stored in flash. I'm really curious to see when you get around to having a Token Ring network running on these, have a PA-4R though I have the same issue that you have at 23:38 whenever it's in the router. Not sure if it's a compatibility issue or a hardware issue, but either way it'd be great to get some old equipment working that require that type of connection. These routers will also do voice switching on those T1 controllers, alongside running CME if you wanted to experiment with the older 7940/7960 VoIP phones.

[@clabretro]

Thanks for the config tips, figured there was no way people just put up with that ha. And I think you're right about the register, gonna mess around with that next time I fire them up. I'll have to try that ATM-CES board in the 7206 since it has a different boot rom version, that might give us some clues. Surprising you have that issue with a PA-4R, figured that'd be a pretty widely-supported card. I'll definitely be building up a token ring setup after I acquire a bit more gear for it.

[@steven44799]

The config issue could be that the config-register is set to 0x2142 instead of 0x2102 so show version and down the bottom you will see the config register value - in conf t run: config-register 0x2102 to change it.

[@stonent]

Probably when these were wiped the person didn't know the login so did trick to ignore the startup but forgot to set it back.

[@RowanHawkins]

I just had a palm pilot app that let me decode the hash. cisco fixed that issue later on.

[@clabretro]

totally makes sense, I think you're right!

[@SimmanGodz]

@@clabretroYep, setting them to 2142 is actually a method for password recovery on older cisco gear. You interupt the boot, fall into ROMMON, set it to 2142 (Instead of 2102), reset, boot into full IOS, enable, then copy start run.

[@chaseohara4781]

That Cisco router was shipper to you in a Juniper box! Blasphemy! 😂

[@nickwallette6201]

I know! How dare someone put Cisco dreg in a Juniper box! haha :-D

[@Samu0535]

I love old Cisco stuff, keep it coming!

[@dross1705]

I need a t-shirt with the stick figure guy poking two routers and he says, “do routing” 😅

[@clabretro]

😂

[@noahisamathnerd]

Clab merch when

[@BobHolowenko]

The Office Space reference was *chefs kiss*. Also, your VM network wasn't in the far end routing table

[@danielsimpkins9662]

Came here to comment that. Classic Office Space reference.

[@OdyseeEnjoyer]

I'm loving this networking content. As a young nerd it's really cool to actually watch legacy equipment videos like this. Also, I'm seeing you forget to exit configuration terminal before executing commands, thus getting some errors. If you prepend the command with "do" like "Router(config-if)# do show ip int brief" it will work with no need of exiting the terminal. Hope this helps!

[@clabretro]

thanks! I actually meant to mention in the video, whatever old versions of ios I've got those things don't appear to support "do" haha

[@chaseohara4781]

The AUX port is literally for connecting a physical modem to. It basically passes the CLI through to the modem. It's just an asynchronous serial connection.

[@lkchild]

heads up good practice is to use “wr mem” or “write memory” to write to NVRAM memory, as you can also use “write line” to show you the unsaved running config where “show conf” shows you the saved startup configuration. Cisco made this easier with “running-config” and “startup-config” in later versions, but you may come across older versions that don’t support it.

[@keyboard_g]

I remember going to college around then and T1 was the fastest networking I had ever heard of. It was amazing.

[@NotColaTai]

Man these home lab setups are getting crazy

[@titaniumpotato112]

i think that while backing up the running config to a tftp server is technically more correct, doing 'show run', selecting the whole listing, copy pasting into a text document is way easier and faster. That's how we were taught for CCNA and Net+

[@jfbeam]

And VERY often creates something that can't be simply cut-n-paste back. (I've watched too many idiots fail over and over)

[@elesjuan]

That aux port should be just another serial console port which you'd hook a dial-up modem for "offline" remote console access. They're not all too common in my world these days, but I still have a few pieces of critical equipment in my DC with 56k modems for "back door access" to. Beyond that... despite the fact that we have multiple 10Gb circuits from network providers into my building in 2024, we still have legacy T1 and T3 shelves that are active and in use. The fact that so much legacy stuff lingers about so long still to this day blows my mind. Thanks Caleb, this channel is the most fun on youtube right now. The antique tech stuff you uncover and learn / play with is just great.

[@thomasbonse]

Where I work, we just decommed the last T1 circuit in 2022. It was a big enough deal that we even had a company party. 😁🎉

[@Cross3DG]

For 35:50 there are a couple of different things you can do: if you still want log messages but not to have them break up your commands, use "logging synchronous" under the line con 0 section. If you want the log messages to stop altogether, "no logging console" under global config should work. I never worked on a 7200 myself so I'm hoping those commands aren't too new.

[@clabretro]

thanks!

[@Stealth86651]

Man I always appreciate the heavy, solid construction and engineering for more commercial products. Chunky controls with that heavy detent, metal handles to pull stuff out of racks, RGB that displays useful information instead of doing a light show, etc.

[@beedslolkuntus2070]

Cough cough Ubishit

[@jfbeam]

And yet, Cisco put those stupid paper-clip bails on them.

[@RealEngineer]

Finally new old tech!🎉

[@alc5440]

You were on the right track with the lack of connectivity between your lab network and your home network. You had a route from the the lab network to you home network via RIP but your home network had no route to send data back. Dynamic routing support is virtually non-existent for Ubiquiti hardware so the only real option would be to enable NAT on the Cisco with the T1 interface as the inside and the connection to your home network as the outside.

[@clabretro]

makes sense! I was close ha

[@netzwerk-werkstatt332]

This video again was a travel into the past for me. ATM was very popular as WAN connection in the 2000s in europe, especially in germany. The double width PA was completly new to me. I have never seen them before.

[@olearycrew]

The way you bring Linksys switches into frame is 👩‍🍳💋

[@doodles113]

3:24 Oh man, i miss my home network setup back in the day (circa 2000´s)using an IBM 8228 Token Ring MAU with my desktop, my server and my laptop.....good times of a great learning experience...

[@KronK0321]

43:12 The reason you get an 80 percent success rate is because the router has to perform an ARP request to translate the IP address into the MAC address. During this time, the first ping packet times out. If you were to immediately issue another ping, all 5 packets would succeed because the ARP table is now populated!

[@stonent]

Yeah nearly every time I set up a piece of new equipment, it drops the first packet. But pinging a second time will get you the full 5/6.

[@jeffbrl]

You beat me to it. I agree. This behavior seems to happen most often with old routers running IOS. You don't see this if you ping from a linux VM. Perhaps IOS is slow to process the ARP reply and the Echo request times out before it does.

[@clabretro]

makes sense!

[@tripplefives1402]

ATM was a protocol that can be put over different medium. Adapters available also with coax BNC and ATM itself originally ran over dialup and ISDN. ATM is a WAN technology, not really a competitor with Ethernet. It's basically a port adapter with OC3 connectors to connect directly to the telco's fiber optic line where it connects to an "ATM switch" which is just a router with a bunch of those ports where links are preconfigured similar to frame relay except it worked directly with the telco network whereas most WANs the telco just provides raw links point to point.

[@toronaldaris]

Agreed Tripplefives, A lot of the time the Router on the other end was a 7206!

[@jfbeam]

Yes, like ethernet, ATM is both a layer-1 and a layer-2, but most people only know it as a layer-2. I may still have some of the 3Com ATM PCI cards that had RJ45 ports. (people always mistook them for ethernet cards.) I've only seen ATM used on T1, T3, and OC-3. (and technically, various flavors of DSL. ADSL is ATM. SDSL and IDSL could as well, but our network was frame-relay.) The PA-8T1's he has might be able to do "encaps atm", but the T3 interfaces will NOT; there are specific ATM versions of the T3 PA's.

[@nickwallette6201]

@@jfbeam DSL was my first exposure to ATM, when I worked at a provider and had to configure new out-of-the-box DSL modems for deployment. I later got to play with it in my lab between some Cisco ISRs and first-gen Juniper SRXs.

[@1anwrang13r]

For a time in the mid 90s ATM to the desktop was going to be the Next Big Thing in networking. All the main networking vendors had a roadmap that included it and were cranking out products that supported it as it was allegedly good at the "triple play" of voice, video and data for the emerging multimedia trend. I remember going on a press trip back in about 1994 where a big casino resort (could have been Foxwoods CT) was installing IBM ATM kit to deliver 25Mbps connections to every hotel room so they could pipe TV, phone and data to set-top boxes. ATM to the desk eventually died out around 2000 as it was cheaper, and way easier, to use Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet instead.

[@questionablecommands9423]

34:42 clabretro: "I'm all about simple to set up down here." Narrator: Said the man setting up a T1 line on decades old hardware

[@clabretro]

haha

[@SimmanGodz]

We had 3 7206VXR's at work that used to do the WAN connectivity. They got retired in like 2015 I think. All 3 had the NPE-G2s. I got inspired and tried to fire them up. Unfortunately, one of the Chassis's has a bad fan and a Dead NPE-G2. But I'm building out a lab at work with the remaining two. We had a Cisco 2951 as the core router, but I can get it pegged at 100% cpu pretty easily so the VXR's should be an improvement!

[@Chikana2011]

To answer your question about the logging messages in the terminal while typing; yes. Yes, it is annoying. I work for a Managed Service Provider, selling "business grade internet" to our customers with all Cisco gear. I would always have a terminal monitor enabled if remote or console onto a Cisco device while onsite. I do like to see what is happening in real time but the drawback it it can interrupt the typing of the command. P.s. I like watching your videos to see how technology worked before my time even though it wasn't that long ago.

[@RowanHawkins]

It doesn't interupt you typing the command. It only breaks the line view of the command. If you tap the up and down arrows once each the command line will get redrawn if you need to review it before pressing enter.

[@_vilepenguin]

Clabretro excites my wonderment.

[@LB4FH]

Another Sunday morning with old Cisco gear, I love it 😉

[@4rft5]

it wouldn't be a good weekend without a clabretro upload. Thanks!

[@MadITGeek]

old servers are what got me into dedicated game server hosting...something I still do to this day (for friends and family) . seeing the menus of HL1 brings back memories thought they where so COOL. (the animations)

[@lkchild]

Your config register is set to 0x2142 instead of 0x2102 - when you do a password reset to get in after a lost password, you need to set it back again afterwards :). There’s a config-register command to save you going back into the bootloader ROM again, but you can do it either way.

[@clabretro]

ah ha, I will try that. thanks!

[@computersales]

This crazy to think these have such a long service life and gained so much interest on KZbin. Trying to think about how many of these I've recycled.

[@markpriceful]

Amazing work! I think the config save issue is just one simple config register away .. cool to see how much ground you covered here.

[@tcpnetworks]

I used 500 of them back in the day to run an ISP - Asia-Online. They were excellent - Reliable machine..

[@BobHolowenko]

Flashback to my CCNA and CCNP cert in 2005

[@chaseohara4781]

ATM is a fun protocol... It's still used in some very legacy networks, particularly in developing parts of the world that don't have a lot of infrastructure investment. It's more of a WAN protocol than LAN, so less of a direct competitor to Ethernet. Highlights are that the frame size is fixed (very reliable throughput that way, malign it suitable for carrying voice traffic as well), and that it requires dedicated circuits to be set up ahead of time for two endpoints to communicate (perfect for telecom providers since there's it's very secure). It was one of the main protocols used for SONET/SDH. It was still part of the Cisco curriculum when I trained, although it was pretty outmoded even then.

[@yamamoto65536]

Company I worked for installed ATM (IIRC it is acronym of async transfer mode) as floor to floor link on 199x and decommissioned it on 2003. IIRC it was 155Mbps and packet size is fixed to 53 bytes, header 5 bytes, payload 48 bytes. The bit encoding relies on ridiculously expensive precision clock circuits on both end: consecutive 500 clock cycles of zero Volt should be recognized as 500 bit of zero not 499 nor 501 with required accuracy I don't remember but it was one in 100 million error rate or so

[@caldog20]

This brings back memories. You could put the good SUP in them and run MPLS on them. We used 7200's to terminate tons of channelized DS3s to serve T1s to customers. Fun times and tons of BERT tests.

[@lawrenceplays]

I saw that dslam video a couple days ago. Then scrolled through the comments to see if you had seen it. What a small world!

[@twitchmeeri]

I love your videos. I'm using your videos to learn about old tech and English in an interessting way :)

[@clabretro]

thank you! that's awesome.

[@datashed]

Love the 7204VXR! I use one as my core router in the datashed.

[@theserialport]

. . . 2 Port Adapters at the same time 🤣

[@decafpancakes]

Wake up babe...new clabretro video just dropped

[@fabianio26]

I'm enjoying all your videos lately, despite I'm not a network engineer at all, nor have access to this type of equipment. Neither required by my current work either. But still enjoying all your manual work setting up these big old monsters. Cheers!

[@clabretro]

thanks, glad to hear that!

[@amak1131]

wr should work the same as copy run start. When I was in the AF and in training, we had similar where the switches we used would take it but lose the config. Turned out they've been wiped/written to so much over the years (after each little practice run we had to wipe the switch and reboot) the internal flash was simply dead. Given how old these are, it wouldn't surprise me if that's the case here. I don't 100% recall if the routers write to the flash card by default, but my experience was we'd use that as a backup of sorts. Backing up via tftp is also better as I ran into times where the old copy/paste messed up some stuff and the device did not like importing the file. Once configured (which is fairly quick once you do it a few times), was a lot easier just pushing the file which we commonly did with a base config we'd use.

[@matthewnokes1859]

Excellent video! A lot of the stuff went over my head as a networking and homelab noob, but it has given me a lot of stuff to research out of curiosity haha. Love the content!

[@clabretro]

thank you!

[@Geardos1]

thinking about how I had to do all this in exams now I'm watching these videos of IOS config for fun on a weekend

[@v12alpine]

A buddy had an OC3 running to one of these back in the day. Good memories.

[@TrolleyMC]

great video clab, can't wait to see what the whole retro network looks like over time.

[@chaseohara4781]

The reason the chassis is the same size for 4 or 6 slot (aside from cost saving for using the same case like you said) is probably because it making it smaller wouldn't change it from a 3U to a 2U, and it's a sin to not follow the size conventions in corporate gear!

[@JTrickZ]

finally finished it, and i watched the dslam video like 2 day ago and was like i wonder if clabretro is going to touch ATM lol

[@steven44799]

You could have a play with BGP, getting it going at a basic level is quite simple but then it allows for a lot of flexibility if you start adding in route maps etc for filtering/messing with the inputs/outputs of the routing tables

[@clabretro]

definitely, planning to do that eventually!

[@rayneradam]

50 mins of retro networking 🎉

[@UpLateGeek]

In fact, you do want to use smaller subnets on the 10.0.0.0/8 range, it allows much more efficient use of address space, which is exactly what subnetting is all about. Pretty much the only maths you need to remember in networking is 2^n and 2^n-2, where n is the number of bits in your subnet/host range. So for your /24 subnet, that's 8 bits for the hosts, so 2^8 means 256 IP addresses, and 2^8-2 means 254 usable IP addresses since the first and last addresses are unusable (subnet and broadcast addresses). That allows for 2^16 subnets (i.e. 10.0.0.0/24 to 10.255.255.0/24), or 65536 subnets. That's a lot of subnets, but depending on the way you carve them up, they can be used up pretty quickly in a large organisation. So on a point-to-point link, you only really need two IP addresses, and while a /31 would provide one bit or 2^1=2 host addresses, both are unusable since you still need a subnet address and broadcast address, so you really need a /30 for 2^2-2=2 host addresses. That being said, a /24 is fine for a point-to-point link in the lab, it's not best practice, but it'll work just fine as you saw. However if you are planning on doing certifications, you really should be practising subnetting so you can work out the numbers quickly. Back when I was at uni, I practised it so much, when I sat for our 1.5 hour subnetting exam, I had it finished in

[@clabretro]

I have been tempted to take an exam ha

[@Sharkie1717]

Your collection's are awesome. Great video!

[@clabretro]

thanks!

[@JZB-2022]

Very interesting to see a *more* modern 7201 router. I suppose it was effectively replaced by the ASR line later on.

[@s_SoNick]

Kind of; I don't know the specifics but one company I work with had VXRs that were old technology and being replaced with the ONS line. By the time I had started to get my footing and learn the network, the ASR 9000 line were the newest thing and they were working on moving some of the network to them. Nowadays one client is using ASRs, one is using a mix of ASRs and NCSes. I think one of the clients still had VXRs(?) for their OADM tandem voice stuff, but it's in the process of being decommissioned.

[@jfbeam]

The word you're looking for is "newb". :-) But we still love ya'. The first issue you're having is due to dead NVRAM batteries. There's a CR2032 on the I/O board. Until that's replaced, nothing in NVRAM will persist. That includes the "confreg". Second, there are three bits of software on these boxes: ROMMON, bootflash, IOS. ROMMON is like the BIOS of a PC, it only understands a very limited bit of hardware... just enough to access (boot)flash. The "boot helper" image (kboot) in bootflash is a mini-IOS that has drivers for a select bit of hardware; it's there to support a network boot, or other limited diagnostics. And then there's the full IOS in flash. (or "disk#:") (Side note: from ROMMON, one can direct boot IOS: boot disk0:image.bin On our 7513 - with *112 T1 ports* - the boothelper normal process would take 2.5hrs! At any given instant ~5% of customer interfaces will be down. The boothelper waits for ALL interfaces to come up before proceeding. I spent YEARS bitching to Cisco about that f'ing stupidity.) To round out the collection, I'd recommend a 7401 as well. Just be mindful of the hardware rev -- "-10" or newer or it'll crash due to a L3-cache hardware flaw. Cisco offered to replace all of them, but there are still plenty to be found on eBay.

[@clabretro]

thanks for the info as always! had a feeling that NVRAM complaint would be battery related and not just config-related.

[@csudsuindustries]

Sun Microsystems used RIP heavily in the 90s. Even is the mid/late 90s. Well at least in the ENG domain. The only time I saw RIPv2 was CBS in the early 2000s

[@LeeZhiWei8219]

Here we go! More Cisco stuff. As always man. You are an awesome dude. Awesome video.

[@LeeZhiWei8219]

Good thing you used the word "typically" because you can configure VLANs on ports such as Ethernet ports, and route between these two virtual interfaces, but all traffic is only flowing through one cable. 🤯

[@LeeZhiWei8219]

Woah! The 7201! Modern cisco logo too!

[@LeeZhiWei8219]

Yes dude, it is super annoying hahahaha.... When messing with my Cisco gear over console, it's annoying, those automatic messages. Ssh/telnet doesn't have this issue

[@LeeZhiWei8219]

When I saw the default gateway not set, kinda facepalmed abit. But I made that mistake before lol.

[@clabretro]

haha yeah not diving into VLANs just yet! (though I have them set up on the main ubiquity rack). I really need to setup SSH into these things too

[@RowanHawkins]

On the hot insertion. If you look at the midplane connector you'll see that the pins are different length. That allows the power grounds to be atrached before the data or hot power pins which prevents power surging in the device. Some, notably IBM server chassis can turn off the power to a card or ram slot allowing its removal and replacement if cable management was used. Part of the cost is this extra power manangement designed into the custom connector.

[@Vinicius_Schneider]

Awesome video as always!

[@clabretro]

thank you!

[@coreykunak1]

great video. You have entered POWER DRIVE.

[@TomStorey96]

Check your config register value (e.g. in "show ver"), it migt be set to ignore the config on boot. You'll want it to be 0x2102 (0x2142 tells it to ignore the stored config). You can change it through "config t" and then I think its "config-register 0x2102". You can verify that the configuration is there on boot with a "show start".

[@clabretro]

perfect! figured it was something simple, I'll give that a shot.

[@Zizzily]

So, at 34:49 when you're talking about live commands, it doesn't show up over SSH. Generally the console interface is treated more as a resource of last resort, so it all prints debugging info for troubleshooting. You can turn it off completely with "no logging console" or limit it to "logging console " which can be emergencies, alerts, critical, errors, warnings, notifications, information, or debugging. And, as other folks have mentioned, ATM still exists for a lot of telco stuff and ISP fiber sometime and stuff. GPON uses Ethernet for data and ATM for voice.

[@trym2001]

I’m glad I found your channel. Thanks for another great vid!

[@clabretro]

thanks!

[@DarkT3ch]

As much as I'm a huge fan of the styling on the Cisco 2960-X switch equipment.... these routers have somewhat of an ominous look to them and I have to say, I'm into it. Something maybe worth mentioning, pending you don't already do, I'm not sure if it would work on these devices but on older all the way to new Cisco devices I program from the CLI, something I do as I make changes is write the confit from whatever prompt I'm at. I say this because at one point in this video I see you enter exit a time or two to get back to the main prompt to enter wr, there's nothing wrong with doing so but I just wanted to mention that you can enter "do wr" from any prompt and it will save the config as the "do" is a wildcard for Cisco and allows you to execute those top level commands like "show up int bri" or "sh vlan bri" or "sh up access-lists". I find myself often using "do sh run" to check on port changes as I make them.... and if you're a real wizard you can even do "do sh run | begin inter" which will show the running confit from where ever you are beginning at the line starting with inter, which is usually interface..... and now I'm going to go check in the mirror to see if I'm an ultra nerd now..... anyway, hope this is maybe helpful!

[@DarkT3ch]

I really need to wait till I'm done watching the full video before commenting.... anyway, as someone else said, since you asked, the text being generated and dumped back into the terminal in the fashion you're seeing it is because the terminal port by default is set (or sorta just does) to do that. To change it (to stop it) all you have to do is enter config mode like normal, then enter "line con 0" to configure the console port and enter "logging synchronous" which will cause output to the terminal to be suffixed with a new line, causing your text to be much better formatted rather than being interrupted by the router telling you about what's going on. The other other bit I noted was when you attempted to get to the TFTP server from the "far" router (I can't remember which one was the "furtherest" (has the most hops to get to the internet) from the gateway. I made to observations, if your TFTP server is on your main gateway on say 192.168.10.0/24 (just an example subnet) and the one 7200 only knows advertises 192.168.1.0/24, things won't work for a few reasons, the car router has no idea where to look for the 192.168.10.0/24 network because the first 7200 isn't advertising it. Even if it was you may still get stuck because the first router (your gateway) doesn't have a route all the way back to the far 7200 that it is aware of. There are a few ways of fixing that, of course, your method was the easiest, most reliable and simplest (and frankly the one I would've done too). But if you wanted to make the traffic pass over t1, the best course of action (that I'm aware of) would be to set the gateway of last resort (the default gateway) on the far Cisco to the first 7200s interface that faces the far 7200. Then on the first 7200, you can either do the same and set the gateway of last resort to the main gateway of yours (whatever router it is next to hit) or create a route for the 192.168.10.0/24 network, with the next hop being your main gateway (again or whatever the first 7200 is plugged into) and then on that device that the first 7200 is plugged into, create a static route back to the fat Cisco using the first 7200 as its first hop address. This assumes your main gateway device doesn't use/support RIP and hopefully all of what I've said makes sense and is helpful, if it is great! If it isn't, do tell me to be quiet, and if you have questions, feel free to ask. Alright, now I'm good.

[@clabretro]

I do agree they have an ominous look to them. And you're right about traffic not able to get back to the 7200s, makes sense!

[@DarkT3ch]

@@clabretro routing is one fun game to play.... ask me how I know.... you're a legend for reading all of this garble haha

[@alexbenevides7364]

I love when I see a new clab vid posted

[@emmettkeyser1110]

ATM not much used in the US I do t think but I think in other less developed areas of the world. Used circuit switching protocols instead of packet switched. Supposedly more reliable when routing over unreliable networks/providers. I think the gist was that many independent virtual circuits were created and traffic was sent over each of those circuits asynchronously which could span any number of providers and networks and recombined at the other end.

[@RowanHawkins]

It was very used in wan connections that were not vpn because they didn't traverse the internet. It was nothing a computer jockey would ever run into. Banks, Industrial and government systems. think unpowered/dark fiber point2point links that didn't interact with a switched telephone network.

[@perryraybuck1239]

Another great and entertaining video! Thank you.

[@Zoey_yea_boom]

One of the first things i do to a cisco switch/router enable -> config t --> line con 0 ---> logging synchronous you will thank me later.

[@slazer2au]

Dont forget line vty 0 15 logging sync

[@clabretro]

definitely doing this now

[@beedslolkuntus2070]

Didn’t skip a bit. Watched everything. I’d have hosted MC server and played that over the T1!! Lol.

[@ricki11cook]

When you said “do routing”, I was thinking to myself “please don’t use RIP, please don’t use RIP…” haha.

[@clabretro]

😆

[@lkchild]

you need to use the “logging synchronous” command to have the console messages wait, or “no logging console” to turn off console logging. If you’re telneted or sshed into a vty line you can turn the messages on and off with “terminal monitor” and “terminal no monitor”

[@clabretro]

thanks!

[@junker15]

My go-to IGP for dynamic routing is OSPF (even for Cisco routers that support EIGRP ;o) It's really easy to set up and you only need to be aware of what networks you tell OSPF to pay attention to and which interfaces are not passive (on IOS, none are passive by default).

[@clabretro]

yeah RIP is definitely outdated but I wanted to try it ha. OSPF is next

[@johnkreno2488]

I believe that that dual width card might be for emulating T1's over ATM. One of the things that ATM could do well before it was possible over IP/Ethernet was Time Division Multiplexing Circuit Emulation

[@Joe-tl2lf]

Enjoying these videos. Your issue with the configs not persisting could be related to the configuration registers set in rommon. "Ignore config" is one of the flags and I'm suspicious that it's set. You'll have to boot into rommon to fix it but you should be smooth sailing after Edit: Finished the video. Sounds like you were close to figuring it out. I'd check those out first

[@clabretro]

yup I think you're right!

[@chadlawson9346]

Something’s wrong with me, at 12:28 the sound of that click had me all giddy ;eager to go connect something up!

[@ledon26656]

35:41 - getting the log messages interrupting you while writing commands. You can stop this by doing the "logging synchronous" command on your console line. Like this: Router>enable Router#configure terminal Router(config)#line console 0 Router(config-line)#logging synchronous Router(config-line)#end That will stop those annoying logs getting in the way. You can also apply this to the VTY lines (which are used for telnet and ssh connections) by using the above commands but with "Router(config)#line vty 0 4" or "Router(config)#line vty 0 15" depending on how many lines (don't know on routers as old as the 7200s).

[@berndeckenfels]

35:45 Agreed, The console alerts are very annoying you could change the loglevel but then make sure to configure syslog. In practice it’s less critical, since it won’t happen virtual console(ssh)

[@movax20h]

Super obsolete, but still interesting to learn obscure things like DSL, ATM, TokenRing, T1, T3, strange fiber standards, etc Also easy to play with cisco cli, routing protocols, and not worrying important stuff will break.

[@alecjahn]

I remember us elitist high school kids saying we wouldn't play CS 1.6, especially since it required this new STEAM thing. After one of us swapped over (and maybe our Warcraft 3 Mod server made the switch?) just a couple months later, we all had accounts. Still played 1.5 regularly for LAN parties, etc, since it just felt right. Anyways, I appreciate you living out some of my "wish I had more space and cash for some more large, heavy, metal boxes in my home" dreams so that I don't have to. I really love these vids! The stuff I first learned on - takes me back! Though I hardly remember a thing. :D

[@clabretro]

I had the EXACT same 1.6 experience, haha. thanks for watching!

[@andresbravo2003]

this is a chonker! it was so taller!

[@samsthomas]

Now that you have all these PAs, you should pick up a 75xx chassis (I recommend a 7513 for the full experience) with VIP2/50s or VIP4/80s.

[@samsthomas]

Also, interesting note... the midplane is PCI.

[@samsthomas]

OMG,BURN the ATM PA! ATM wasn't really much of a competitor for ethernet, more of the "new evolution of frame relay". ATM is garbage. There's a reason you haven't heard much about it.

[@floodo1]

You should make your own crossover Ethernet cable as a rite of passage and for a vintage experience! (-8

[@RowanHawkins]

he has made them since that short cable is a crossover t1 otherwise the devices would not communicate. If he wants to link gigabit ports, I don't think that generation did mdix so he would have to make a completely nonstandard full crossover. Cable to link them.

[@damirkvajo]

What a great way to end my day. Tnx :)

[@The_Electronic_Beard]

Very expensive router. Love it! 😂 Keep these awesome videos rolling out bud!

[@der.Schtefan]

T1 was used to carry ATM cells. I am not surprised such a card exists.

[@-r-495]

Boy this is sweet! Ever handled anything from BlackBox? They build the accessories for such infrastructure, I assume thou will find their quality to be at least on par. No affiliation. I was just surprised one day about a serial converter that had been in use for more than 20a and that sent me shopping (for work!). Very interesting, this scratched my itch ^^

[@clabretro]

I haven't used any BlackBox stuff!

[@owenflaherty7516]

49:17 your config register is set to 0x2142, which ignores startup-config. Change it to 0x2102 for a normal boot!!

[@clabretro]

thanks!