So long, home T1 line; hello, hacking the T1 router | Hacker News Reader

So long, home T1 line; hello, hacking the T1 router

oldvcr.blogspot.com

199 pointstodsacerdoti53 comments

I had a T1 line in my house when I lived in rural New Hampshire from 2000 to 2005. There was no other option at the time and I was working from home and needed something.

Cost was high (around $1k a month if I recall correctly) but it was very stable. And the support was good, too.

Once lightning struck the house and fried a bunch of stuff including the CSU/DSU in the basement. I called 911 and they sent out the local police. When he smelled the burnt electronics he suggested we call out the local volunteer fire department. Apparently lightning strikes can cause a smoldering fire in the walls.

The fire department arrived with a thermal imaging camera and you could see the heated up drywall screws leading toward the well-grounded telecom equipment for the T1. No fires in the wall thankfully.

While the fire department was there the local telecom truck pulled up to replace the CSU/DSU. The T1 was back in service within an hour of the lightning strike.

OpenBSD actually had a port to similar Freescale MPC834x boards, but it was discontinued in 2015.

https://www.openbsd.org/socppc.html

I feel like the author of this post, given their interests and history, might be amused by this tidbit.

> "OpenBSD/socppc [was] binary compatible with OpenBSD/macppc; all existing OpenBSD/powerpc packages [ran] fine on OpenBSD/socppc."

Didn't know that, and yes, I am amused! However, it looks like it was more focused on systems that ran Linux or some such already. I'd need to make a boot system specifically for this - but, by no means impossible, now that I've figured out what the bootloader is looking for.

That said, I'm one of those NetBSD guys. ;)

Ah well. At least the code/drivers remain in the CVS Attic, perhaps they might be useful for a future NetBSD port.

Fun write-up.

I think the big hurdle would be getting the serial console up, but if I understand the board correctly, those drivers may indeed be the ticket. So thank you!

> I'm one of those NetBSD guys.

I'm the other one. />

If neither of you are named Eric, there’s three of you.

These stories about old telephone equipment are so fascinating. I remember when T1s were state of the art now they're going to be a lost art

I know.. I remember lusting over the single T1 we had at work (this was circa 1999 or so, shared between a hundred employees or so) compared to the mere 56k I had at home... 1.5 whole megabits...

The highlight of my K-12 sysadmin stint was replacing an $800/mo. T1 with a point to point wireless solution which gave the remote site nearly the same speed as on-site.

I'm in (roughly) downtown Chicago. My building had no wired Internet when I moved in here last year (!). I called Comcast and they wanted $71,000 to install, and $800/month minimum to wire me up, despite all my neighbors already using them.

I called AT&T. Yes, they can have me hooked up with DSL tomorrow. At 1.5Mbps. O_o

What about RCN? Is that Comcast now?

I'm not sure if they are Comcast now. They seemed to be separate when I called them. They couldn't help me, though.

Is fiber an option for you?

Would it be from a different company outside the major players? I spent weeks trying to find anyone who could wire this building and gave up. I'm on 5G now which is actually 100X more useable than I expected.

I remember chatting with an online friend in the USA using msn messenger who had a T1 line. It seemed so imaginary, 1.5mbs. The 56kb modem that I had averaged around 13kbs due to living out in the middle of nowhere.

Years later (mid 00s) I still had the same connection but all my friends were on 256kbs-2mbs adsl but with ridiculous datacaps. I was so envious of people in the states that had similar connection speeds but could download as much as they wanted like it was some kind of American buffet.

Moving to uni saw me break into the 2 figure mbs club but the datacaps were still there.

Then the NZ govt decided to do something abou it, they "unbundled the local loop" and the market became more competitive, no more 20gb down+up for 60USD a month.

Then realising the internet was the backbone of a strong e-conomy, they started building out a nationwide fibre network.

For around 120USD, you can now get business tier fibre up to 8gbs in your home (or if you don't want the business SLA you can just get the consumer version at the same speed, slightly cheaper).

I hear stories of how bad the internet is in Australia and how far the USA have fallen, to the point a lot of people still can't even get fibre and I feel sad they're not the inspirational places that I imagined as a kid.

Fellow Kiwi here, living in Austin, TX. Some crew just went up all the streets in our neighborhood and left a GFBR box buried in our front yard. Things are looking up!

There is _a lot_ of kiwis on this site. It’s always good to see. Best of luck with the install mate.

I remember as a young kid (11ish) I lived in Rochester, NY, which was one of the first areas to get cable modems. I pleaded the case to my parents and we cancelled the extra phone line we used for the modem and payed the extra $20 towards a cable modem.

This was one of the few moments in my life that felt like ‘the future’ was arriving (the other around this time was my voodoo2 gpu running unreal). A year or so later we moved to Columbus which didn’t have high speed available yet.

What’s the quote, the future is already here it’s just not evenly distributed?

Incidentally I now live in Toledo and my internet is probably about the same speed as it was 25+ years ago… sigh

I work with a dev from Toledo, a couple weeks ago they ripped up his back yard to put fiber in. Help is on the way :)

But yes, at the moment his speed sucks.

The US unbundled the local loop in 1996, but it was done by 2003.

Maybe I’ve got the terminology wrong, so please correct me, I thought unbundling meant you wouldn’t have things like “I can only get Comcast in my neighborhood / building”

1. Cable TV was never unbundled, just telephone/DSL

2. In 2003 FCC ended unbundling of DSL (though unbundling had already had a lot of teeth removed by various court cases and FCC interpretations of the law).

My first programming job while in college (circa '98 or so) was at a small custom software dev shop, and they had an ISDN line. I would bring in my personal desktop to play quake online and download updates.

My next job was at a much bigger company who happened to have a data center in my home town. They had something like 70-100 T1s (T3?) coming into the building. Keep in mind they were used for both the phone system and data. I remember the older network people talking about the PITA it was get them all put down and how the local phone company said whatever was there was maxed. We were also spread across 2 buildings separated by a parking lot with a fiber connection between the buildings. The stuff I got to play with was pretty cool. Even though the company had a big parent, the DC was in a smallish town and mostly a free for all for the tech hires. My badge let me into anything. No way would that be allowed today.

I was also a beta tester when Comcast first rolled out cable internet in my town - that changed everything.

The lust for more speed was real (before that it was more RAM lol). Now I have 1gb u/d fiber and never think about link speed.

And I remember me salivating in the 90s when I read "T3" on napster!

Think about that for a second. 45Mbps. It sounded so huge. Even your low tier 25 dollar a month cable modem packages can outdo that. (Now they're nowhere near as stable, and they're definitely not synchronous) But in this age of Gigabit being pretty common, it's fun to remember a time when that was so far out of our reach. Some kid on his dorm room ethernet sharing his entire collection... and me on my brand new ADSL modem downloading song by song, minute by minute.

In fact my home was one of the first home in France to get a DSL connection. The modem could do 8mbit, but the phone company capped it at 500kbit. The problem is that though the connection from the exchange to the home was DSL, the infrastructure behind was the same infrastructure they used for 56k connections. So you ended up with a DSL connection that was about the same speed than a 56k modem...

And now I am complaining about having only 100mbit upload.

Then you might be interested to watch this guy who bought an electromechanical telephone exchange. And then expanded it more and more as he obtained and restored more parts. There are many more videos on this subject on both this channels.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvhqZbtU_Zs

Also check out the Connections Museum, either on YouTube[1] or in person in Seattle if you can! Lots of cool old lost-art telephone hardware and a few volunteers trying to keep it running. Another interesting option is C*NET[2], a VoIP telephone network for connecting collector-owned obsolete telephone hardware together.

1: https://www.youtube.com/c/ConnectionsMuseum

2: https://ckts.info/

I look after dozens of E1 lines and hundreds of ISDN2 lines.

Quite often when we have faults, I have to teach the BT Openreach engineers how to use the diagnostic equipment to track down where the fault is.

> "If you've read my blogs for any length of time you knew my eyes lit up the minute I realized this was a PowerPC system. Now I had to make it all mine."

In that case you should hook all your management serial ports (also USB, USB2, PS/2, Sun) up to an Avocent DSR KVM: https://imgur.com/a/NFTTtvS :)

I have something like this, never bothered to do the serial bits. I really should, I will probably do some ebay buying sometime.

The only downside is the serial transceivers aren't self-powered like the USB ones. The upside is that their barrel connectors expect the same 5V and can be easily adapted to USB-port power.

Nerd-snipe: You can buy T1 simulators on ebay that would let you get the T1 link back up and running. :)

For somebody who wants to play around with T1's you can make a crossover cable and connect two T1 interfaces back-to-back. You'll want to designate one side as providing clocking (and the other receiving clock from "the network").

How about cutting a T1 down to ISDN BRIs? That's where I want to get so I can play with old ISDN phones and such.

Hmm. I've never done any of that but it sounds like fun. Cisco has some BRI VIC interfaces (expansion cards) for the 2600-series routers. I bet some of that gear is dirt-cheap on eBay. Getting software will probably be more problematic than the hardware.

Oh yeah, I remember installing these things for COVAD - they were replacing the netopia terminals at the time. I think they did both T1 and SDSL - the neat part is, for the T-Span models, you can wire two of them back to back, and have about a 5kft range on wire.

I worked for Netopia for a short time back in the 90s. Really fun company! Working next to the hardware guys was seriously informative. Lots of interesting kit to play with for sure.

Fascinating and well-written read! Thank you for sharing!

Author here. Thank you!

For what its worth, I skipped over the T1 route and went with business class cable very early on, it'll perform better than the home cable (business class usually gets their own nodes, so they're more lightly loaded with an SLA) - and the cost is minimal, I have a 400/20 circuit from Spectrum for about 200 a month, including 16 routed IP's.

That would have been my preference, but the cable company was useless and wasted my time for weeks.

Is it Cox, Spectrum or Comcast there?

You'll have to call their business class phone number, I've done this with spectrum and comcast before. ISTR, you're in socal somewhere, so I'm not sure who.

In this area, business cable uses the exact same infrastructure as residential. I pay about $150/month for 300/30. Hoping to move to fiber soon.

Just chiming in: awesome read! I really love your dedication to get into this beautiful beast.

Up until your post I pretty much had forgotten about T1,T2, Tx lines and how much I wanted one back in the day.

I did not understand why you had to get a different cable line for Netflix etc.? The speed of the like couldn’t have been an issue?

Thanks! Just too much bandwidth required for what it was being used for, simple as that.

Wow, I hadn't seen your blog before but you've got amazing content on there!

It's really nice that people know how to do things like this AND share the knowledge. Thanks, and we're all looking forward to chapter 2 on this one!

Looked at a house in the desert summer before last, and the woodwork was deep. Heavy doors, thick windows, awesome wet bar if it was 1974, and a pool that was both indoors and outdoors.

And a T1, still ticking.

Had there been a bomb shelter, I'd be in the house right now.

This brings back memories of my ISP days. I haven't worked with T1s in almost 25 years. Point-to-point T1's, frame relay, 56K dedicated lines, even ISDN. That was all fun stuff.

Those are some neurons that haven’t fired in a while. Haven’t thought about an Adtran CSU/DSU in 20 years.

Happy to help :)

Thanks again, John!

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