Early Vid: V.35 Cables
Added 2024-12-30 05:17:38 +0000 UTCSnuck in one last video for 2024 and, that's right, it's about V.35 cables. We'll get a couple Cisco routers on either end of some CSU/DSUs, using the V.35 cables of course, and get them talking over a T1 connection!
Video very likely to go live Monday afternoon. Thanks again for all the support, it's been an amazing year for the channel!
Comments
That clock rate stuff reminds me of my CCNA. Spending ages fighting with serial DCE/DTE and so on and it seemingly just working without knowing what fixed it. Happy New Year!
Joe Dry
2024-12-31 14:31:32 +0000 UTCFun times. Especially if you have multiple router vendors. Say a WAN card in a Novell NetWare server as a router? Or Windows NT. 😈
DrScriptt
2024-12-30 23:49:41 +0000 UTC+1 for getting silly with frame relay. It would be especially fun if you get bit by the routing protocols bug. You could probably emulate a whole corporate to branch office setup with point-to-multipoint OSPF over all of the DLCIs.
Eric
2024-12-30 23:20:59 +0000 UTCTo be more clear, it was common with the Cisco cables. We had some third-party cables that were fine with pretty much any device with that V.35 connector.
John Bailey
2024-12-30 23:05:07 +0000 UTCI'm actually kind of relieved to hear that, every cable I tried had trouble on that Adtran. And yeah, the CSU/DSUs take up a ton of extra space!
clabretro
2024-12-30 22:56:44 +0000 UTCthat's awesome! looks eerily similar to what I had going on down on the workbench haha!
clabretro
2024-12-30 22:56:03 +0000 UTCThe issue you had with the screws not being able to engage with the CSU/DSU's ports was pretty common. I ran into that several times about 20 years ago as we were replacing Cisco 17xx routers with external CSU/DSU's with Cisco 2801 and 2811 routers with T1 CSU/DSU WIC's. I was so happy to get rid of that extra equipment and cabling...
John Bailey
2024-12-30 22:42:43 +0000 UTCMy high school tried the CCNA curriculum as a class, and got a number of Cisco 1721's donated with serial interface cards with the bright blue V.35 cables. And you better believe we stack those 1721's. This was... damn, 22 years ago now, but I still managed to dig up some pictures, and even a Visio diagram of one of my lab setups: https://imgur.com/a/siLYB5D
Sam Edwards
2024-12-30 22:13:49 +0000 UTCLarger router in the middle would be fun! I'm planning to incorporate a bunch of the 7200 series T1 gear in future iterations.
clabretro
2024-12-30 19:32:58 +0000 UTCNice work. I've done exactly what you did and made very similar faces when it just works. Usually there's an impolite shout of success too! You can also link male and female V.35 cables together without the xSUs in the middle. You would need to set the clock source on the router on one end like you did for the Motorola. T1 Service Unit (TSU) is a combination of a CSU & DSU and does more than the two combined. From memory, Data Service Unit (DSU) converts serial data to channelized data that the CSU is expecting. The Channel Service Unit (CSU) converts the channelized data into raw T1 data stream. Your other device looked to be a 56kb / 64kb Digital Signal 0 (DS-0) leased line device and isn't compatible with the Digital Signal 1 (DS-1) that the T-1 runs at. DS-0 is 64 kbps raw, but often falls down to 56 kbps do to bit-robbing for framing. PPP is somewhat boring. If you switch to Frame Relay and introduce one of your bigger routers with more serial ports as a spine and a 3rd smaller leaf router, you can do virtual circuits from each leaf through the central spine to teach other leaf router. -- PPP is sort of a point-to-point (the name is on the tin) encapsulation. Conversely Frame Relay can do multiple virtual circuits over the physical circuit. If you want to have even more fun, put another larger router in the middle and go from small router <=> big router <=> big router <=> small router. 😈 P.S. I keep forgetting that I have to hit + to get a new line and that just posts / updates.
DrScriptt
2024-12-30 18:30:46 +0000 UTCOh yeah, I've got a ton of T1 gear for the 7200s. This little experiment has inspired me to go all in on that ha.
clabretro
2024-12-30 17:46:38 +0000 UTCNeat! Impressive how it just worked. I think we used Serial quite a bit when I did my CCNA, and that was only... 20 years ago. Shit. I'm hoping the retro rack will have several types of network to connect different bits together, like T1 and dial up, instead of just boring old ethernet everywhere. :)
Martin Paulsen
2024-12-30 17:28:47 +0000 UTCTotally. That older bigger gear is fascinating but just so unrealistic to even just play around with.
clabretro
2024-12-30 15:51:11 +0000 UTCPretty wild to see what must have been a 5 or even 6-figure linecard when new that had significantly less than a single Fast Ethernet’s worth of bandwidth on it. They’re hard to justify for home gamers because of the raw space and power requirements but there’s a certain je ne sais quoi of some of the bigger routers. I reckon quad-redundant (dual supervisor, dual chassis) Cisco VSS with in-service software upgrades (ISSU) and non-stop forwarding (NSF) can give any IBM situation a run for its money in terms of raw, uncut enterprise nonsense. It’s a marvelous symphony to witness but then you’d have like 30U and a couple of kilowatts worth of doorstop when you’ve seen the trick and the novelty wore off.
Eric
2024-12-30 13:31:52 +0000 UTCvertical V.35 linecards must have been impressive. and that's funny about the squatting haha
clabretro
2024-12-30 05:55:01 +0000 UTCOoh neat. I've never used V.35 cables so this was fun to see. There was always this big chonky Cisco router at my old job that had vertical telco-style linecards with those connectors. It wasn't actually in production by the time I saw it but the network group had left it cabled and installed in the rack so that they could squat on the rack space...
Eric
2024-12-30 05:42:06 +0000 UTC
