Mastodawn

dialup.world 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

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Michael Richardson Jul 19, 2023

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

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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

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dialup.world Jul 19, 2023

@AGMS00 @mcr314 That's incredible!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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AGMS

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).