Mastodawn

thiagobernardo Jul 19, 2023

#introductions We cobbled together a free-to-use dialup ISP out of trash and spare parts. dialup.world is composed of four modems for simultaneous connections delivering speeds up to 33.6K.

This is currently a bunch of USR Sportsters hooked into Linux, but we are currently working on setups with Cisco gear, as well as some musings in 56K, other weird dialup appliances, and retro networking.

Check our website http://dialup.world for more information about the setup and how to access! In addition to the PSTN, you can also connect through PhreakNet (https://portal.phreaknet.org), a sort of telephone hobbyist/phreaker/collector darknet.

We also supply dialup access to the WebTV Redialed project (http://webtv.zone) which means if you dig your WebTV out of storage and hook it into a phone line, it *just works* with the original toll-free number and no modification needed on your part!

I invite you to watch our bad ideas become reality.

#modems #dialup #retronetworking #webtv

Louis van Dompselaar Jul 19, 2023

@dialupworld /me eyes my Asterisk, and spare 1-line Grandstream and modem... Would mean I could take my Nokia 9000i on the road again.

dialup.world Jul 19, 2023

@lvdompselaar Every day is a good day to play with modems!

lpbkdotnet Jul 19, 2023

@dialupworld @CuTEL might be interested in this.

Also thanks for the pointer towards webtv.zone - while I didn't ever have a webtv, I spent a lot of time on usenet chatting to one particularly memorable webtv user... I wonder what he's been up to in the last 20 years

CuTEL Jul 28, 2023

@lpbkdotnet @dialupworld

Just spotted this, yes following the project with interest and lurking in the IRC channel

Kelvin n0mql EN35ld Jul 19, 2023

@dialupworld
You really should put a content warning on porn like this.

When I saw the red rotary phone with replacement beige handset cord, I nearly plotzed.

dialup.world Jul 19, 2023

@kelvin0mql Hah! I had that red phone sitting broken for years and to replace the cord I literally bought the least expensive one I could find. The contrast turned out great and it's probably my favorite phone to just stare at.

Kelvin n0mql EN35ld Jul 19, 2023

Agreed. It's friggin' gorgeous.

@dialupworld this is sick!!!! i love it!

Florence Jul 19, 2023

@dialupworld Been thinking about this lately - glad it's still running!!

Bob Hannent Jul 19, 2023

@dialupworld I have two unused phone lines my ISPs oblige me to have.
Could be fun to set something like this up in the UK as well.
I wonder where I can find a modem...

Bob Hannent Jul 19, 2023

@dialupworld curses, you made me buy a modem...

Bob Hannent Jul 26, 2023

@dialupworld argh!!!
It's arrived and it's BNIB... My desire to not break the seal and preserve it is high!

dialup.world Jul 26, 2023

@bobdvb it wants to be free!

Pete Jul 19, 2023

@dialupworld This brings back so much nostalgia.

Erik Uden 🚩Jul 19, 2023

@dialupworld This is incredible. I am amazed. Half of German ministries still run on this

Trammell Hudson Jul 19, 2023

@dialupworld do you support 300 baud with no vt100 emulation?

dialup.world Jul 19, 2023

@th We actually sort of did for a bit! I was running modems that spoke Bell 103 and baudot so I could connect a TDD from a public payphone and play Zork for a bit, though the speed was so low the Zork prompts would time out before we could receive all the text! It's really hard to find text things online to interact with that don't assume at least vt100.

We did ultimately do some relaying to IRC, though.

Ubergeek Jul 20, 2023

@dialupworld @th You might be able to find the terminfo files for these "wacky" devices.

There's one for the Tandy M100 even :)

https://github.com/hackerb9/Tandy-Terminfo

GitHub - hackerb9/Tandy-Terminfo: UNIX terminfo for TRS-80 Model 100 and Tandy 200 allowing screen control for TELCOM

UNIX terminfo for TRS-80 Model 100 and Tandy 200 allowing screen control for TELCOM - GitHub - hackerb9/Tandy-Terminfo: UNIX terminfo for TRS-80 Model 100 and Tandy 200 allowing screen control for ...

GitHub

Michael Richardson Jul 19, 2023

@dialupworld Oh my. Retro-computing has reached the dialup era?

dialup.world Jul 19, 2023

@mcr314 Damned if I know, I just like LARPing as a dialup ISP engineer!

AGMS Jul 19, 2023

@mcr314 I think NCF still has some dial-up equipment in Ottawa. Yes, now down to 23 lines in the 613 area code. https://www.ncf.ca/en/high-speed-internet/dial/ They’ve been running since 1993.

Dial-up Internet - National Capital FreeNet

National Capital FreeNet is an Internet Service Provider committed to digital access. We sell Internet, offer community services and support digital literacy across the National Capital Region.

National Capital FreeNet

dialup.world Jul 19, 2023

@AGMS00 @mcr314 That's incredible!

AGMS Jul 19, 2023

@dialupworld @mcr314 That made me dust off the modem and attempt to get it working. After finding the right serial cable…

Anyway, an hour and some screeching noises later, I got it working as far as logging in - my NCF password doesn’t seem to work. Sigh.

AGMS Jul 22, 2023

@dialupworld @mcr314 Several more hours later…

Got things working better, did a few dial-up Internet PPP sessions.

Turns out Bell Fibe telephone service is VOIP and doesn’t do the full frequency range of a real phone line, but if you cut the modulation scheme down to the older V.34 speeds, it’s useable.

Also Fedora Linux now has a DNS stub resolver so /etc/resolv.conf doesn’t work, instead there’s a resolvectl command to manipulate things.

And of course some telephone lines were broken too.

dialup.world Jul 23, 2023

@AGMS00 @mcr314 That's too bad about Bell Fiber's telephone service :( I should probably start making notes of what experiences people have with different providers.

AGMS Jul 23, 2023

Well, if you have the Fibe hardware, there’s usually an Ethernet port you can use directly instead of dial-up. And it’s 17000 times faster. But costs more.

Their telephone simulation is also electrically wimpy; real phone bells are somewhat quiet rather than earth shatteringly loud. But it does handle rotary dialing well enough now (had ridiculously short timeouts earlier).

Michael Richardson Jul 23, 2023

@AGMS00 @dialupworld no voip system is going to have the frequency range of a POTS. I'm surprised you got anything working. In theory, though, if you can mark the line as *FAX*, then the VoIP system will actually terminate the V.34, etc. for you and give you a digital channel to the other end.

AGMS Jul 24, 2023

@mcr314 Why not as good as POTS? Because they’re cheap? POTS evolved to digital telephone exchanges which sampled the signal at 8khz. What does VOIP do? Seemingly always worse, using compression to get lower bit rates.

Someone needs to invent VOIP-HD, with better than POTS quality. Bandwidth is certainly cheap enough now. Maybe even do stereo.

AGMS Jul 24, 2023

Actually maybe that’s what Apple FaceTime, Zoom, Skype et al can do?

Michael Richardson Jul 28, 2023

@AGMS00 The problem with the public internet is jitter and latency: bufferbloat.

AGMS Jul 29, 2023

@mcr314 Good point. I wonder if there's some latency impact on the modem's protocol where it wants to know about signal quality on the other end and gets the results back at varying times.

On the other hand, things like dropped data are already handled by various levels of modem and TCP/IP protocols. Though does a dropped chunk of sound upset the modem's synchronisation, causing a resync?

Anyway, yes, new kinds of noise and signal degradation, and many old ones.

Michael Richardson Jul 23, 2023

@AGMS00 I am/was aa714.

@dialupworld Will you be documenting the software and hardware you used to do this? I've wanted to do this for a long time but had no idea where to start.

dialup.world Jul 19, 2023

@spike Mostly already done! The broad strokes and all the hardware information can be found right on our website, http://dialup.world/ while the software nitty gritty is in our GitHub, https://github.com/Dialup-World/linux-config
There are a few little things I haven't documented yet but nothing major.

I'll admit though that A LOT of this is borrowed from an existing guide by Doge Microsystems, https://dogemicrosystems.ca/wiki/Dial-up_pool which is excellent!

Anything I do going forward will definitely be documented as well!

@dialupworld This is an excellent starting point. Thank you! Let the dialup ISP hobbyists commence!

MrC Jul 19, 2023

@dialupworld This looks fun, I went from a single line dialup ISP (VBBS) to running the network of a multi-pop ISP in the early 90s. Cut my teeth on Livingston gear and Sun 4 boxes. Best of luck!

dialup.world Jul 19, 2023

@ScotttSee Very cool, thanks for sharing! I've been considering picking up some Livingston gear, I've heard good things. It would be cool one day to get my Sun and SGI machines working and have everything hooked up to them, though that's a stretch goal.

MrC Jul 19, 2023

@dialupworld The Livingston products were great, I think we made it to the PM4 with PRI lines and 56k modems, then Lucent bought both Ascend and Livingston and killed the Livingston products and kept the Ascend ones that caught fire (allegedly) instead.

joshua stein Jul 19, 2023

@dialupworld If you have any use for a US Robotics Total Control NETServer/8 V.34 modem chassis, I'll send it to you

dialup.world Jul 19, 2023

@jcs Definitely could make use of it! I'll send you a private message!

Chartreuse Jul 19, 2023

@dialupworld Just noticed a mention of voip.ms on your site. Are the modems hosted on there?

Nice benefit there is that voip.ms to voip.ms calls are free so no 1c/min rates for people dialing in with that option.

I've had good luck with them doing modem lines myself.

dialup.world Jul 20, 2023

@ChartreuseK Indeed, I have a SIP trunk from voip.ms which ultimately terminates at the modems. The quality is fairy good and most people are able to call in with minimal issues!

Chartreuse Jul 20, 2023

@dialupworld Yeah with the right ATA settings I've been able to do from 300 baud with no error correction up to 33,600 just fine on it personally. Just a bit higher latency than a non-voip connection due to the need of a fairly large jitter buffer. Will have to try dialing in later today.

Keiko Jul 21, 2023

@dialupworld @ChartreuseK You mentioned you might try a 56k service. Which server side modems are you planning to use? Are you going to do E1 or T1? What will you use to convert SIP to ISDN PRI?

I ask all of this, since I used to work for a company that designed and built IP gateways, and we developed all our own signalling stacks for all of these systems (sans the 56k modems)

I still have all the code in an archive.

dialup.world Jul 21, 2023

@keiko @ChartreuseK Two possibilities here.

1) I have all of the hardware that this person used to create their in-home 56K setup outlined here, https://www.reddit.com/r/vintagecomputing/comments/t5m1l5/inhome_56k_isp/ Basically it would be composed of an ISDN simulator, USR I-Modem, and an ISDN TA.

2) My friend has a Cisco AS5300 he is working on setting up and is converting SIP to ISDN PRI from an Adtran Total Access unit. The Cisco has a few dozen MICA modems that should support 56K.

In-home 56K ISP

Posted in r/vintagecomputing by u/Retrocet • 206 points and 38 comments

reddit

vga256 Jul 19, 2023

@dialupworld ooooo i adore this. do you possibly have a writeup somewhere of how the specific equipment you're using is glued together? are you running the sportsters off the linux box's serial ports, or have something else set up?

Chartreuse Jul 19, 2023

@vga256 @dialupworld

It doesn't look quite as chaotic, but an "all in one" option for doing much the same is a USRobotics NetServer/16 or similar, which are dial in modem banks that can do PPP natively. Then just hook them up to a multi-port voip adapter, or if you get a later type one straight into a T1 card.

vga256 Jul 20, 2023

@ChartreuseK @dialupworld you just saved me *so* much work. i had been considering buying a Livingston Portmaster 2e/3e, and ingesting serial port connections from physical external modems. This was the setup we had at the ISP I worked at as a kid.

Chartreuse Jul 20, 2023

@vga256 @dialupworld My original "home" setup was a pair of 16-port modem banks, but picked up the netserver and that was so much less hassle for simple PPP.

Chartreuse Jul 20, 2023

@vga256 @dialupworld It also can do SLIP and AppleTalk Dialup (IIRC). As well you have have an account that you can log into then telnet to other systems from it.

vga256 Jul 20, 2023

@ChartreuseK @dialupworld now to find one 😅

Chartreuse Jul 20, 2023

@vga256 @dialupworld Watch out for the ISDN ones (I-Modems) unless you have the stuff to do a home ISDN setup.

There's also a smaller NetServer/8. and unders in the TotalControl lineup.

vga256 Jul 20, 2023

@ChartreuseK @dialupworld yes - I noticed those were out there too. sadly was never familiar with ISDN stuff.

Mark Eichin Jul 20, 2023

@vga256 @ChartreuseK @dialupworld Hah, at the Cygnus Boston office we had one of those with one or maybe two modems on it - because the real reason we had it was to hang a bunch of embedded boards on for our local "small" cross-compiler test suite, so a bunch of networked physical serial ports in one place was perfect

vga256 Jul 20, 2023

@eichin 😅 two out of 32 serial ports leaves plenty of room for expansion

lopta Jul 19, 2023

@dialupworld Is ISDN still available where you are?

dialup.world Jul 20, 2023

@lopta Out of curiosity I just looked and it seems they stopped offering new installs in 2020

lopta Jul 20, 2023

@dialupworld Those meannies!

anotherandrew Jul 19, 2023

@dialupworld I think I still have a MaxTNT in my garage. The downside is you’ll need a DS3 to plug in to it.