I'm told by our Alcatel rep that the APX 8000 is no longer supported and that we can no longer get hardware support because they "don't have any spare parts".
I share a certain amount of love for this platform dating back to Ascend, but what am I to do now? Obviously no one is making large investments in their dial platform, but are there any other viable alternatives out there that are actually supported?
~jerry
I think the only one under support may be the Cisco AS series (AS5800 only
now?):
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/univgate/ps509/
The other platform I knew besides the TNT was the Nortel CVX but it is EOL
also.
-Scott
I don't think that you can buy new support contracts for the AS5800 series
anymore.
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/iad/ps509/ps512/end_of_life_notice_c51-463159.html
-Bill
Vendors aren't releasing much new dial gear anymore because customers aren't buying it. Your best bet might be to check the secondary market for TNT/APX8000 parts.
I have a small handful of AS5300s still floating around for that handful of users who can't (or won't) ditch dialup. Luckily that number is small enough that I can replace any failed parts with parts from other chassis, since the ones I have were EOL'd long ago.
jms
The current 'still works, has features, etc' box is as5400xm, and is terming most of a full ct3 per chassis. Any-Service Any-Port, t.37 on/off ramping, and v.34/v.92 works quite well, as do the nifty high-touch features (mppc, stac, mlppp-lfi, hqos, etc), thanks to the npe-g1-worth of CPU in the box. We use this for v.110/120 isdn and switched-56 (yes, it still exists) calls, tdm-tdm ISDN switching, and a few pstn OOB channels.
-Tk
Does this not highlight a wider issue?
I realise that dialup is hardly 'cutting edge' but there are providers out
there with a significant number of dialup customers still on the books.
Surely there's still a market for (what should be by now) a
straightforward, well known piece of kit?
In parts of the world where broadband is not ubiquitous and dialup remains
useful as a Plan-B or is simply the only choice (for whatever reason),
what are the practical choices now?
Whilst folks may not be fielding 'new' dialup kit, I dare say that we're
going to be continuing to see dialup customers on the books for the next 5
years, perhaps a lot longer? That's a whole product lifespan...
Once upon a time, Justin M. Streiner <streiner@cluebyfour.org> said:
I have a small handful of AS5300s still floating around for that handful
of users who can't (or won't) ditch dialup. Luckily that number is small
enough that I can replace any failed parts with parts from other chassis,
since the ones I have were EOL'd long ago.
I'm in the same boat with TNTs. We bought replacement fans years ago
(about the only TNT part we've had fail, outside the odd card or two).
How are ISPs that still offer dialup going to handle dialup and IPv6? I
know the TNTs don't do it, and I don't think most of the old equipment
in use in many places does.
Just tunnel IPv6 over IPv4 and run a tunnel broker.
Mark
My suspicion is that providers' dial gear might be included in the chunks of their networks that are considered 'not native v6 capable' as another way to try to 'goose' more people off of dialup and onto a broadband connection where v6 might be supported more easily.
jms
Mark Foster wrote:
Does this not highlight a wider issue?
I realise that dialup is hardly 'cutting edge' but there are providers out
there with a significant number of dialup customers still on the books.
Surely there's still a market for (what should be by now) a
straightforward, well known piece of kit?In parts of the world where broadband is not ubiquitous and dialup remains
useful as a Plan-B or is simply the only choice (for whatever reason),
what are the practical choices now?Whilst folks may not be fielding 'new' dialup kit, I dare say that we're
going to be continuing to see dialup customers on the books for the next 5
years, perhaps a lot longer? That's a whole product lifespan...
Welcome to what telcos have been dealing with for 10 to 20 years with product lifecycles. The PSTN isn't exactly a growing market, and has lots of EOL switches, yet it continues to run. Secondary support markets, grey markets, and strategic migrations to carry internal sparing.
Or you find a cost effective way to replace it with something; or you accept that the revenue vs. cost-to-maintain is too high and just kill the product.
aj
p.s. UTStarcom was still supporting the [former USR/3com] TotalControl chassis as of about 2 years ago; I don't know if they still do. They were positioning it as a migration platform for legacy X.25 networks.
Chris Adams wrote:
How are ISPs that still offer dialup going to handle dialup and IPv6? I
know the TNTs don't do it, and I don't think most of the old equipment
in use in many places does.
Most likely the customers still on dialup are not going to worry about IPv6 - if their systems even support it. In fact several operators I have spoken to have considered their legacy dialup plant as a good place to test Carrier Grade NAT in a low impact manner.
Couple it with some kind of ALG (transparent proxy + DNS tricks) for IPv6-only sites and you have something which might work.
If you really need native IPv6 support for dialup then using a legacy NAS as a dial-terminator LAC and tunneling to an IPv6 capable LNS might be a solution for you.
aj
> How are ISPs that still offer dialup going to handle dialup and IPv6? I
> know the TNTs don't do it, and I don't think most of the old equipment
> in use in many places does.6to4
You don't want 6to4. Even if you provide relay routers the return
traffic is problematic. 6to4 also requires public IPv4 addresses
and you will eventually want to share these between your customers.
6rd would also be appropriate for this if you don't want to run
a tunnel broker.
Providing 6to4 for dialup users is an adequate level of effort. And we're mot running out of public IPv4 addresses anytime soon for the blossoming dialup business ;).
Antonio Querubin
808-545-5282 x3003
e-mail/xmpp: tony@lava.net
Some telcos are starting to kill off legacy services as they reach the end of their life cycle. I saw an application from Verizon in West Virginia to modify their tariff to remove SMDS as a service. According to the filing, no customers were using it and vendor support for it was coming to an end. I'm assuming at some point that Verizon stopped selling the service and quietly told any remaining customers that they needed to transition to other services because SMDS would be turned off on a certain date. I've heard of some LECs starting to mull dropping frame relay as a supported service as well...
jms
How about an Aastra CVX shelf? We used one at an ISP I used to work for in Maine. It worked well. Dial-up was considered the cash cow then.
--C
In a message written on Mon, May 10, 2010 at 11:28:42AM -0500, Jerry Bonner wrote:
I share a certain amount of love for this platform dating back to Ascend, but what am I to do now? Obviously no one is making large investments in their dial platform, but are there any other viable alternatives out there that are actually supported?
DSL, Cable Modems, WiFi, WiMax, FTTH.....
Seriously, AT&T now offers $10 per month DSL:
AT&T launches $10 DSL it hopes no one signs up for | Ars Technica,
768k down, 128k up.
There comes a time when the old tech just doesn't make sense, even
if a small customer base still wants it.
There will also no doubt continue to be many customers for whom dial is the only option.
It's not long ago that I lived in such a house, deceptively close to the outskirts of town but in terms of wire distance and load coils it might as well have been on the moon. The house was in a wireless dead zone by a river, there was no cable, and the only line of sight to another structure was through several acres of 2.4GHz-absorbing trees.
The further you move away from urban centres, the easier it is to find examples of this.
Joe
30% of all people in the US (110 million) have no access to broadband. Large areas of my state have no access to broadband because its rural (Maine).
Aastra CVX (it used to be a Nortel product.)
--Curtis