RE: Modem Pool

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Date: Mon, 17 May 2004 09:09:55 -0600 (MDT)
To: Troy Settle <troy@psknet.com>

On Mon, 17 May 2004, Troy Settle wrote:

> I agree with Shawn. While FreeBSD /can/ terminate dialup connections, it's
> not a very fun thing to do. You're limited to v34, and probably 16 or 32
> max connections. For the price of the multi-port serial board and modems,
> you can have a much nicer solution. Anyone terminating more than 2 or 3
> dialup connections directly on FreeBSD boxes is either crazy, or has had
> their system running for more than a few years.
>
> > If you want to support anything other than 28.8k modems (i.e.
> > 56k modems),
> > you'll have to have your inbound lines as DS-1/PRI lines.

Evan,

If you are looking for a smallish system, and you want to be able to
handle digital connections (including 56K analog dial-ups), you can also
use ISDN lines (BRI) if they are available in your area (should be
available anywhere) to be able to add lines two at a time instead of 24 at
a time with a T1 (PRI). Here in Calgary, the rotary (hunt group) is
included in the ISDN line cost.

For hardware, you'd need anything from a few of the S/T interface version
of the USR I-Modem with external NT-1s (using the regular U interface
version with the built-in NT-1 won't work when you want to put two
separate modems on the two separate B-channels on the ISDN line) to
something like the USR Modem Pool/8 or MP/16 with multi-port serial cards,
if you want your FreeBSD host to actually act as the ppp server.

A better solution is to get an old USR Netserver/8 or Netserver/16, which
is a modem pool with an internal 486SX machine that does the server job
for you and has all 16 serial ports on-board. 3Com also made the RAS1500
based on the same technology, but I've had reliability problems with them.
My original one died when the first caller called in after a firmware
upgrade (luckily about a month before the warranty expired), and the
replacement flaked out about a year later. It seems to have a bad SRAM on
the board, but I've never hunted down the problem chip... I'm using my
Netserver/16 instead.

Obviously, other companies made similar systems.... These are examples.

Later...... <Doug>

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