Does anyone have any suggestions on equipment for our ISP that is still
supporting dial up customers?
At the moment we are running 3Com Total Control 1000's but are running out
of spare parts as we have failures. Given that this gear is so old trying
to source spare parts is proving to be difficult.
We do have access to an Cisco AS5200 but are looking for maybe a SIP based
solution that could possibly run on our VM farm? Has anyone heard of
anything like that or does it even exist?
What kind of gear are you running if you still are supporting dial up
customers?
Thanks in advance
My previous employer still has racks of APX 8000's. Reseller market appears to still be at least somewhat alive, and I know my previous employer has ~30 chassis and boxes upon boxes of cards for 'em; they may be willing to unload some if you have any interest. Hit me up off-list if so and I can see if they have a desire to part with them, and I'll connect you.
-Tim
Coretel - outsource your modem pool
Outsource it.
http://www.dialupusa.net/
Used them for years probably 10 years until we stopped dial-up. Very solid network.
Justin Wilson
j2sw@mtin.net
The AS5200 is so old, their 10mb ethernet ports are AUI, so you need transcievers hanging off the back of them, and though I bet you can get them for free or the cost of shipping, I wouldn't recommend them.
AFAIK, cisco stopped making dedicated dialup service gear some years ago, but you can still find AS5300 and AS5400 gear used for pennies on the dollar. I'd avoid the older 2U AS5300 96 and 192 port units. We had a bunch of those 2 jobs ago, and as we started pulling them from service (shutting down the dialup POPs), we found that many of them would not boot up again when tested back at the office. I kind of wonder now if they were affected by cisco's "defective RAM issue".
Depending on the density you need, an AS5400HPX (and an M13 mux if needed) might be a reasonable way to go.
We're still using USR Robotics/3com TotalControls and were able to get some spare parts from our statewide telecom partner when they shut down their stuff. Most common problem we see now are fan failures, but we just cannabilize existing the fans out of a fan tray. The volume of calls are so low that there are no hours that no one is dialed in, and at most we see two people connected at one time.
Frank
3Com TC here. 9 users online at the moment. Surprises me that it's that high. Last reboot on the HiperARC was 399 days ago. I almost forgot how to log on to the damned thing.
I'm going to go with Justin's suggestion and go with a wholesale provider such as DialupUSA. It's not worth paying for the lines and keeping a T1 or better for just a few users. DialupUSA use to charge around $5/user. They also had hourly and per port options. Looks like you can port existing numbers to them now. I used them 9-10 years ago and they were great to work with! IKANO bought them out since then, but they still operate under DialupUSA.net. They have DSL and T1 options too.
- Jason
We only run our own because as a CLEC, we self supply the PRI. Otherwise yes, outsource away...
Don't forget about this bug:
Uptime bug is referenced in UTStarcom documentation as AnswerID 3497;
The ISP I consult to uses an outsource dial service (don't remember which one). They require us to maintain a RADIUS server accessible from the public internet, to validate callers and handle options and restrictions. You probably have a RADIUS server already, but you may need to make minor (but tedious) modifications.
Factor that into your planning.
ipass worldwide aka psinet did such with end auth on psinet radius infrastructure
I would highly suggest staying away from any type of voip (sip/iax/h323/h248) solution for anything that has to do with modems unless your qos is tight from a to z. It's a good way to go bald real fast lol.... my 2 cents.
Carlos Alcantar
Race Communications / Race Team Member
1325 Howard Ave. #604, Burlingame, CA. 94010
Phone: +1 415 376 3314 / carlos@race.com / http://www.race.com
Livingston/Lucent PortMaster 3. 48 ports over 2 T1 interfaces and 10baseT all in 3 RU. Supports RADIUS. We dumped our last boxes many years ago; you can probably find some at portmasters.com.
Cheers.
matthew black
california state university, long beach