Since I've just gotten back into BBS'ing and Fidonet, I thought I'd get some perspectives from folks on analog modems, the PSTN, and
dial-up BBS'ing. This seems relevant even if most people seem to be running strictly IP nodes anymore, given the history of Fidonet's now much
less relevant zone:net/node structure for minimizing connection costs. Even if that is likely to remain, even if only an historical artifact, it occurs to me that it's something that should be retained even if, as is already happening in
a lot of places, copper wires, T1's, and even ISDN and DSL as well, are now being obsoleted. It could be relevent for mesh WiFi networks, for instance.

The local ILEC, for instance, no longer advertises their (former?) dial-up Internet and has moved past DSL to fiber, offering symmetric gigabit capacity for less than the price of a T1. This is all fine and dandy, but there doesn't seem to be any straightforward way to do DCE to DCE communications over IP, absent expensive proprietary software, for the most part on expensive proprietary networking switches and routers. I haven't had occasion to order a voice phone line that ran over fiber yet, but I'm hearing that even with proper
QoS, the voice bandwidth is just not there for analog data connections. Any insight there would be welcome. I could be wrong on that.

There is a 2003 ITU recommendation, V.150.1, otherwise known as V.MOIP, that addresses this, but again
there seem to be only costly proprietary products available. There are other, basically half-measures, such as iaxmodem, or various tricks using SIP signaling combined with G.711, RTP, etc. that are limited
in bandwidth to about 9600 baud, and less than completely reliable, for fax and
possibly data modem connections.

Yeah, I have an old Total Control chassis loaded with quad V.34 modems, and if T1's are still available here, I could set up a multi-line dial-up system, but I'm thinking some kind of open-source V.150.1 implementation might be worth pursuing, given all the myriad other legacy analog DCE equipment still out there. If the patent issues on a lot of the other V. stuff.

Appreciate any comments or direction, and sorry if this is well-trod ground in this echo.





Greetings, James Digriz
email: jbdigriz@bbs.dragonsweb.org

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On 04/04/18, James Digriz pondered and said...

Since I've just gotten back into BBS'ing and Fidonet, I thought I'd get

Welcome back, I've flicked you a netmail.

Best, Paul

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Hi James!

04 Apr 2018 17:11, from James Digriz -> All:

Since I've just gotten back into BBS'ing and Fidonet, I thought I'd
get some perspectives from folks on analog modems, the PSTN,
and dial-up BBS'ing.

From my point of view analog modems, PSTN and BBSes are completely irrelevant nowadays.
There seem to be some people who, for whatever reason, still have BBSes, but all that I know use IP communication like SSH or (jikes :( ) telnet.

CU, Ricsi

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On 2018 Apr 06 07:35:04, you wrote to me:

I probably wasn't clear enough, though.

maybe... i thought i understood what you were trying to say but i guess not...

The problem I'm looking at is going from serial connections to analog
and back, on both ends, over the PSTN, when there is no copper,
analog, or TDM. Where there is no POTS, only fiber, only IP data networking underlying everything. It's not clear to me that such use
of voice phone lines will be univerally available.

AHHH! ok... yeah, you can do this but you will have to deal with the problem of
the codecs that the telco's use for encoding the voice traffic over the network... i don't know their names of numbers... that's all confusing for the most part... i know that in some cases, it works and works well aside from the network protocol paradigm that allows for packets to travel via different paths... some have been successful with several of the available VoIP products... others have not... some can only get 9600 while others may see 19200 or better... it really depends on the network, the codecs and QOS or similar that may be in play...

With or without the "repeal" of "Net Neutrality", the economics appear
to disencentive support for analog data.

i think that's a separate thing, altogether... other than maybe restricting VoIP, it should not get in the way...

)\/(ark

Always Mount a Scratch Monkey
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