Subj : Analog modems in the digital age.
To   : All
From : James Digriz
Date : Wed Apr 04 2018 05:11 pm

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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