Multiple Homelab Dial-up Lines

Using a variety of old Cisco gear to expand my homelab dial-up setup from one line to multiple (available concurrently!) I'll figure out how to use Voice Interface Cards and set them up as an ATA, then we'll test the whole thing with a couple computers and a Dreamcast.
Previous Dial-up Video: • Homelab Dial-Up
Installing IOS Versions: • Cisco GigaStack Cluster
Check me out on Patreon: / clabretro
Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio
#cisco #retrotech #homelab #dialup
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[@thatLion01]

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

[@clabretro]

ha that's great

[@NickBouwhuis]

you raised him well :). Keep doiing what you're doing!

[@alisharifian535]

And both of us live in a same world which I didn't have slightest idea what a modem is when i was 5 😂

[@thatLion01]

@@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.

[@riceman00]

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.

[@clabretro]

very cool!

[@markarca6360]

CUCM is now obsolete, and it's successor is Cisco Unity.

[@The_Electronic_Beard]

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 😂

[@clabretro]

haha

[@brentgoeller8257]

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.

[@clabretro]

nice! yeah I decided to take the long route haha

[@nostromons6325]

Жена тебя еще не проклянула за это ?

[@cda32]

next: Home DOCSIS cable network

[@clabretro]

oh yeah

[@darthkielbasa]

A CMTS in the lab would be fantastic. A bit pricey but fun.

[@bunkermatty]

we need this video.

[@ShadowL1th1]

I would LOVE to see this

[@PaulFisher]

at a certain point you’ll have a whole-ass headend. add voip and you’re running triple play

[@The_Real_CMA]

just noticed you have 33.6k subscribers... perfect timing.

[@clabretro]

haha!

[@tripplefives1402]

The main reason why modem cards are rare is because dial up ISPs used T1 cards on their end to receive incoming dialup calls. Remember, t1 was primarily a telephone trunk with 24 phone lines multiplexed digitally. The new stuff like 56k requires that the ISP has a T1 card. There isn't physical hardware modems and the modem stuff is done in software.

[@naikrovek]

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.

[@coreybabcock2023]

Remember haxoware ?

[@phobozad]

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.

[@pvalpha]

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.

[@DEVAXTATOR-1]

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!!

[@LeazonGaming]

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".

[@clabretro]

glad to hear that!

[@jojodi]

Nice! On the dreamcast, your modem settings are centrally stored to 128KB flash (same place your language selection, time zone etc. are). Great video!

[@mcpr5971]

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!

[@amak1131]

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.

[@wafflesandcoffeetoday]

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!

[@clabretro]

that's awesome!

[@hgbugalou]

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.

[@fatcrypto]

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.

[@joeysutter9436]

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! (:

[@VK2FVAX]

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.

[@renatofp]

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)

[@gordonm2821]

@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 :-)

[@casperghst42]

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 😊

[@adslf874yti3q7u4hf83]

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.

[@BestSpatula]

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!

[@MazeFrame]

My first hands on with Cisco was on a 2900-series. Good memories!

[@ergosteur]

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.

[@TIMLPDE]

Aaah. A great final video before going to bed, educational, but I doubt a lot will actually stay in my head. 😂

[@JaspervanStijn]

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!

[@kitbuny]

I'm nostalgic for rooting around in IOS now. Love this video!

[@JehuMcSpooran]

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.

[@chaseohara4781]

The 2900 series is still super common in installs I see. Honestly not my favourite, but it's fine. Haha

[@n0tqu1tesane]

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.

[@AtreidaeChibiko]

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!

[@Blaidomon]

Was very sad to hear "two of them" but not see two lovely grey kittens

[@alexdhall]

Yes, two of them (CRD) 😹😹

[@derwildeKnut]

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.

[@mzac23]

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.

[@blackryan5291]

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.

[@FeatherdevNet]

Fun fact I used to tear those 2911 out from CVS locations and replace them with newer dell emc or silicon routers.

[@jeanburgos3416]

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.

[@tdevosodense]

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

[@glynnetolar4423]

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.

[@goxodsgames3363]

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.

[@rmcdudmk212]

Very cool vid. Hard to belive PSO still has servers you can connect too. Love it.

[@miked4377]

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.....

[@damirkvajo]

Job well done, Colby

[@Dan-TechAndMusic]

This is inspiring me to pick up my own at-home dial up project again. I'm going the route of having a Windows Server machine with a DIVA Dialogic PCI ISDN Media card, which is then going through its ISDN BRI connections to a Panasonic PBX, which is where the analog calls are routed to. In theory, that should allow V.90 connections to be possible. Last time I worked on it, for the life of me I couldn't get Windows Server on the Intel Atom board I was using to actually get any network traffic to the dial up connections, they'd establish the modem connection but were never forwarded to either LAN or WAN. One of these days, I'll try some other PC hardware to see if it's something odd with the Atom board.

[@chudite]

what a coincidence, I'm setting up my own home dial up server too!

[@codecae2]

virtua tennis is by far one of the best dreamcast games ever created.

[@UpLateGeek]

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.

[@SproutyPottedPlant]

You are living the dream and have created the ultimate telephone play thing especially since there are Dreamcasts involvedI 😃 I am from the land of the blue Dreamcast swirl, can you set it to use dial and ringing tones from another country or is it fixed and you need to get cards made for that country if you prefer those ones?

[@clabretro]

yup! you can set the voice cards to different locales

[@JakeCovey]

Saw your PSO HUmar was a Purplenum really should go for Skyly or Virida next time.

[@clabretro]

😔

[@ToxicwasteProductions]

Love your videos. How the heck do you learn and get hold of all these epic gear? Here in Sweden they seem mad expensive.

[@YehudaKatz1]

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.

[@clabretro]

that's the plan!

[@tehprogramerer]

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.

[@Steveos312]

Cisco's IOS Telephony functions can get really complex for sure.

[@Regular6782]

I wish someone in Australia would take all my old Cisco gear when we shutdown in a few years, I would hate to see it all go to waste. Whole factory worth of switches, routers and phone stuff.

[@kyle207]

You are making me want to get some stuff to play with. Just wish I had money

[@jarettrobak]

Yes! As mentioned. Please do a t1 trunking video.

[@IanGSully]

I love Cisco stuff 😍😍😍

[@leo_craft1]

7:40 man i regret the days when modem was the internet, every modem in the world could be mounted on your line. Now with fiber optic, it's whole lot faster but they've locked so you cannot plug your sfp into a pc with an sfp card. We are vendor locked with non-business contracts

[@LB4FH]

Great video as always 👍🏻

[@Saphykitten]

You have the neatest hobby, and I adore your channel.

[@utp216]

Very impressed! You create some awesome videos!! 🤘

[@mateuszdrab]

This is really entertaining to watch, brings nostalgia vibes as I've grown up around this time but never had a dial up modem, my first internet connection was a slow 256Kb coax line. Anyways, I love the way you explain everything in one single video. Like the reset process, the cabling to the Cisco gear, the modules and the hierarchy stuff. Everything in one place for someone who might want to reproduce this, rather than being passed off to different videos and links. I'd love to play with this stuff, but I don't have any practical use for it. I do have an ATA and a dial-up modem. Are you aware of any sip dial up server? Something I could run on my hypervisor that the modem could dial to through the ATA?

[@DanielTheRat]

You should get a VG224. Great video as alyways.

[@MarcosCastro-v5n]

Great videos but nothing tops the one with your Dad, when are you going to bring him back

[@clabretro]

ha hopefully someday!

[@firenado4295]

I forgot to say in my other comment but, just thought of it, if you do wind up using a server with asterisk on it, you can port forward the IAX2 ports and then other people can connect to your system over the internet and dial in or you can dial out. Most people I know with systems like this are only for home built PBX systems to bridge to the internet like what the "look mum no computer" youtube channel did with his strowger exchange.

[@SuperHaunts]

maybe you could do a video setting up multiple lines in your house to use old POTS phones as intercoms for room to room "intercoms"

[@owomoshi-gaming]

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

[@FeliciaByNature]

This is amazing, but would have been much easier with two SPA122's.

[@SB-qm5wg]

Amazing work here. Great video.

[@yannickberrios]

My wife asks why I am collecting old Cisco equipment, this video is the main reason 😅

[@clabretro]

😏

[@novashepherd7855]

Collab video with Connections Museum in Seattle when?

[@DimasFajar-ns4vb]

linuxtechtips hardware is so different sir and its my first time watching it

[@rayneradam]

Amazeballs network video again 😀

[@ArvedNet]

where do you find all that old gear haha thats amazing :D

[@clabretro]

mostly eBay 😂

[@a4000t]

very cool stuff.

[@SovietRobot69]

FYI you could’ve used existing RJ45 keystones and just punched down the pairs to bl/blwh which would be the first pair if you plugged in an RJ11

[@Garoninja]

I guess im setting up my own TV station and dial-up ISP. When I get to it anyway

[@RaysGamingChannel2003]

This is Awesome

[@Tevruden]

SADLY those WIC-1DSU-T1 V2 cards don't do channelized T1 and wouldn't be useful for doing 56k (that's a different card for the 2800)

[@albequerque]

someday you should buy a webtv box and add it to the homelab dial up system

[@thomaspelki5719]

Very nice. can you share your config for those that want to replicate this setup?

[@rmccombs66]

I think that is the first time I have seen anyone run PPP over 1200 bps modem. By The Way I think some small ISPs especially one that I used in the 1990s just had shelves of external modems until they had to go digital to support 56K (~really 53K.)

[@donwald3436]

Surely you want the two modems in a hunt group on the same DID?

[@evilborg]

I have been watching your channel for awhile and wonder what your end results are going be.... just to learn or actual use?

[@clabretro]

90% learning 10% use lol

[@evilborg]

@@clabretro Ok that's what I thought.... cause a lot of this is very out dated and not really useful anymore. But I do give you alot of credit for learning how networking and how ISP's work. Most of this is very complicated for the average person.

[@carmine2559]

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!

[@clabretro]

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.

[@carmine2559]

⁠​⁠@@clabretroThank you! I’ll check it out. My wife is not going to be happy lol.

[@clabretro]

😂

[@percival477]

Are you planning on doing an Itanium video?

[@chaseohara4781]

I have only watched 30 seconds so far, but I can already say confidently that you in fact do Not have enough modems. 😂

[@alexjacosta]

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.

[@minibikemadman]

I'm looking to setup a dial in line for my bbs..what's the easiest way to do it. Maybe 2-4 lines..

[@998theraff]

If the shipping to the USA wasn't so expensive, maybe I could ship you some of our old Huawei MA56XX DSLAM/OLT boxes :D

[@warthogA10]

Not of any useful importance but, years ago I worked as a tech for a voice/data/video/networking company.. We sold, installed, and serviced avaya products (from the partner acs up to the definity) and every other brand of business phone systems ancient.. and Cisco products, as well as installing the network cabling infrastructures. Also VM and interactive voice systems. I left the trade around 2003 to start my own small business dealing with all the same on a much smaller scale from sales, design, installation, training, and service which lasted about 2 years before a serious life changing event forced me to sell everything off along with my service contracts. But I still remember the entire business during my time was basically organized-ish chaos with a mix of deep knowledge and random, sporadic guestimating.. and the literal spider webbed booby traps called networking rooms and closets (some in bathrooms and janitor closets) 😳 🤣🤣🤣 And the variety of mix n matched products and chaos and duct tape holding million dollar per day corporations together with hope and luck.. And most importantly, the astounding level of absolutely ridiculous markup on absolutely everything.. Like.. a $40 phone sold for $250 not even including the cost for materials and labor to install it..

[@TimothyWorel-y9k]

Is the ATA the same device as you would use to connect a UK telephone into a Norstar Meridian system

[@wooviee]

You should see what it is trying to connect to via some traffic sniffing, host DNS, and make whatever that page it tries to load hit a simple local nginx host with a 200 OK. Not the most straightforward/simple task, but it would be interesting to see that browser work.

[@sysmatt]

If your goal is to simulate a phone network, perhaps just get a phone network (small PBX) ... I can highly recommend a Partner ACS single module 3x8 (3 incoming, 8 stations) ... Your modems connect to the 8 stations and can call each other by ext #... The partner phone system is very easy to program but even the factory default should work for you. and they support analog modems no problem. Food for thought

[@clabretro]

yeah I think I'll upgrade to a pbx setup eventually!

[@jedixo]

does that 2911 have the UC license enabled on it?

[@coreybabcock2023]

I have a Sierra wireless MC7350 card in a dell vostro 1400 ! And a EM 7565 in my dell latitude 5480

[@handlesRtrash354]

RAHHH NICHE COMPUTER SYSTEMS AND PARTS GAHHHGGGHH