Terminal Servers 

no end in sight lol

I feel ya, those are always awkward conversations 😢

If she's "the one" then she should understand you without explanation.

Its where "it" all started to form. And it hasnt changed much. For example, auth protocols like PPP from the 90s are still used every day in modern fiber connections. I love this channel :)

Right with ya

Dude's got a soothing voice, I'll give you that! Usually when I'm ill, laid up in bed, I listen to Bob Ross. This channel might make a nice fill-in.

I can tell you, his voice and of course the antics, are very enjoyable while I have a lazy brunch on a day off

We used the Cisco 5200 and 5300 as well - "Access Server" (so 'AS5200' and 'AS5300'). Both were 2U, and had 48 and 96 modems per card, respectively, with multiple cards able to run in each unit. 'MICA' and "Microcom' modems (trunked in over T1 lines), I think the MICA modems had more trouble with low-quality lines.

The Serial Port is another RU-vid channel that dives into enterprise gear from this era. They rebuilt exactly what you described: a dial-in ISP, with modems going into a terminal server via PPP, then out to "the internet". It's great to learn a bit more history from them.

It was a great time to be working at an ISP! I loved my time doing the same.

Those cables aren't to special if you have the old (blue, not molded) Cisco console cables, they're the same.

That's exactly what the blue cables do. The black cables were straight-through for connecting modems to the AUX port.

Also: Unless cisco has some special hardware that can flip the pins internally, it wouldn't work to connect two octopus RJ45 connectors to each other with a straight RJ45 female-female adapter, or more importantly it wouldn't work connecting the AUX port of two Cisco routers to each other, or for that sake the console port to each other. I.E. even when exclusively using cisco equipment you would need flipped and straight cables. Suggestion to @clabretro: Either make a simple adapter that breaks out each RJ45 pin to a banana jack or just something that you can put alligator clips on, to use with a multimeter, or get one of those RS232 debug thingies with a bunch of LEDs and whatnot, in order to find out what is going on when a serial connection don't work. Btw, flipped and non-flipped cables have been the bane of existence for any type of consumer electronics equipment that uses the same connector for signals in both directions, like for example a tape recorder. The SCART connectors (common on European TVs and whatnot) mostly solved this by defining the pins as in or out rather than things like record and play). However the older DIN connectors had pins defined as record and pins defined as playback, and in some cases you had to use crossover cables to copy between two tape recorders. In other cases you didn't need that, as some tape recorders only connected an output signal to the play pins while in playback, and otherwise used those pins as an extra recording input (with different signal levels - line level recording on the playback pins and microphone level recording on the recording pins)...

Wednesday?

Thursday here!

I used to work in digital signage - we didn't use the RS232 ports, but I did love the adapters with crazy 7 way 3.5mm jacks 😆

Dude, just this week I set up two RS485 busses in a factory. The old stuff never dies, if it works, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

No, and I used them as late as 2013 for OOB access to our core network and routers in case of emergencies. I had to use it twice in the 5 years I had it there, using a 10Mpbs leased line from the DC when all 3 of our unlink went down and I wasn't on any of our peer networks. Fun times.

Cables with the same idea, i.e. one multi pin connector to several connectors with fewer pines, are used for stage lighting, and those are called whips :) (the stage lighting multi channel connector is called socapex)

@@Thesecret101-te1lm Yeah, those are neat to.

​@@Thesecret101-te1lmwhips, i never heard that in the uk. I use fan-in, fan-out, breakout or tails set. At least for soca->15A/16A.

thanks!

@@clabretro make a video of just an hour straight of lip smacking

Only works if everything you are configuring does the same thing.

I haven't seen that name in a long time. Back around 2008 we were doing network upgrades after a large bank acquired a smaller one. Found an abandoned closet full of terminal servers. Apparently many years prior they were used for a different application, to link banker's dumb terminals back to the main office. Blockbuster video also used terminal servers. Each store ran a AlpahServer DS10 in the back and the front end ran a PC that booted DOS from a floppy disk. They ran this setup until they went out of business. Must have cost them a fortune to maintain.

Nit pick: IT was V35, but the V35 standard expired and thus it's "former v35". Anecdote: A friend had decided to never ever have to have anything to do with V35 in his IT career :D

Cisco is pretty much the standard across all networking consoles across all brands, but yeah storage and other categories decided to be different, for no apparent advantage. The worst I know of is plugging a "standard" Cisco console cable into an APC UPS resulting in an instant power off of the UPS and everything connected.

(Trust me, I broke my fair share of stuff too when I was learning)

thank you!

once the analog lines started showing up I was toast

@@clabretro gluten for punishment LOL

My favorite is a 2600xm with NM-32A

So you have a POTS service to a dial up modem connected to the terminal server, and if conectivity goes down you dial into the terminal server as OOB?

serminal tervers

@@owenvogelgesang7314 servinal termers

​@@owenvogelgesang7314servinal termers

Semen terror

@@xp8969 💀

Indeed. It's why Cisco has become such an ass at "erasing history". Once something is end-of-support, they delete just about everything about it from their systems... starting with the IOS images. Granted, with the speeds of modern networks, most things over a decade old are just too slow. But when you don't care about (or need) high speeds, these things just keep on kicking.

I used this on a pair of 2800s we deployed for an event, and thought I was pretty smart for figuring it out until I found out it's a pretty common thing that's been used on pairs of routers for ages.

thanks!

thanks!

And in particular with the transceiver/MAU a bit away from the device it was of course just a regular DA15 connector and thus way less risk och breaking the connector if you pull on it. This type of AUI cable can be used with transcievers/MAUs used in this video too! (Not 100% sure but I think that the locking mechanism is intentionally weaker than the regular d-sub screws just so that you "only" screw up the locking mechanism and possibly slightly screw up the connectors if you apply excessive force. I.E. with a set of small pliers it will likely be possible to straighten up any bent pins and whatnot).

@@Thesecret101-te1lm Well if the same connector was used for two different purposes, having dissimilar locking mechanisms would aid in not getting them mixed up with each other, after all there are voltage rails (12V?) on the AUI port, that probably would not do a video monitor any good.

@@paulstubbs7678 Good point. PC joysticks use the same connector, but I've never heard of mistakes. Maybe the plastic "shield" of a PC joystic DA15 male connector just collides with the AUI locking mechanism so it won't even go in?

I used to work at a company that I'm fairly sure had the largest conserver deployment in the world and can definitely recommend it. Thousands of devices with an autogenerated configuration and barely ever even gave us hiccups. The ability to spy on connections while other people (or automation) uses the port is super useful.

oof haha

😆

"could do" and "do well" are miles apart. As a console server, cisco's stuff is passable. For dialup termination, Cisco is the worst technology in human history - which is sad seeing how they bought telebit. (but they only wanted the "mica" DSP modem tech. they almost literally threw away the netblazer software - the best RAS tech ever... if you could power the serial ports, a 386/40 with 4MB of RAM booted from a 1.44MB 3.5" floppy could handle 192 sessions with ease.)

yes!

oh yeah

Also, you can get different RJ45-female to DB adapters. You will want the one that goes to DB-25 and is labeled "MODEM" and you can get rid of that null-modem/gender-bender/9-25 mess.

Still have one in my lab today, in reasonably regular use. Have the green cables that are used here too which made me wonder about the pinout comments about the MRV.

definitely! haven't gotten around to trying that out yet

The little end is the hssi. The big one is v.35. Pretty much old adtrans. All of the modern adtrans had the little one and an ethernet port. They also had routers built in. But by then routers had line cards and you didnt need adtrans anymore.

thanks!