Date: Mon, 17 May 2004 09:09:55 -0600 (MDT) From: Doug Russell <drussell@saturn-tech.com> To: Troy Settle <troy@psknet.com> Cc: 'Evan Sayer' <esayer1@san.rr.com> Subject: RE: Modem Pool Message-ID: <20040517090120.C91225-100000@mxb.saturn-tech.com> In-Reply-To: <E1BPiLP-000ANw-4i@psknet.com>
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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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