RE: optical gear cooling requirements

2015-03-05 Thread Vinny_Abello
Dell - Internal Use - Confidential 

Was forced to get an Ascend Superpipe to work with a PM4 for one of our 
customers ages ago. Two ISDN lines... as soon as the 4th channel was thrown 
into multilink, it would drop the 3rd channel. >:O

Finally got it working after a lot of trial and error with stupid settings on 
the Ascend garbage. It was clearly a bug but I forge the specific setting that 
caused that to happen.

-Vinny

-Original Message-
From: NANOG [mailto:nanog-boun...@nanog.org] On Behalf Of Nick Hilliard
Sent: Wednesday, March 4, 2015 4:54 PM
To: nanog@nanog.org
Subject: Re: optical gear cooling requirements

On 04/03/2015 21:33, Jay Hennigan wrote:
> We used Livingston Portmaster 3 back in the day. Front to back 
> ventilation, ran cool as a cucumber, plug it in and it just worked.
> Awesome gear until Lucent bought the company to kill the product in 
> favor of their Ascend TNT space heaters.

Ascend kit was a horror to deal with.  I ran isdn dialin on some of their lower 
end kit at one stage.  It only worked because I put it on a power timer which 
power-cycled it twice a day.

+1 on portmasters, though.

Nick


RE: optical gear cooling requirements

2015-03-05 Thread Vinny_Abello
Dell - Internal Use - Confidential 

Still alive and well out here in 07860. :)

My memory is somewhat rusty as it's been a while, but at Tellurian I'm pretty 
positive we ran a DS3+ worth of lines from Sprint from 07860 so I'm not sure if 
"by far" is totally accurate. ;) We terminated on a PM4 here, mostly with 
bleeding edge fixed code that I don't think was even officially released by 
Lucent. It helps if you know the developers. We had access to the source code 
as well at one time for the Portmaster line. I remember an emergency one time 
where we basically provisioned an on demand T1 to connect POPs together through 
the Portmasters via ISDN. They were cool machines. I also used to run a 
Portmaster ORU at my house which was also rock solid. Great for gaming back 
then...

I know once we ported numbers away from Sprint to Focal/Broadwing/Level 3, at 
our peak we had two DS3's of PRI's on an AS5800 as well. Those boxes bothered 
me as the modems frequently rotted over time and required regular maintenance 
to refresh them and make them happy again... otherwise your call completion 
rates started dipping.

I'm surprised you had so few dialup accounts. When we shutdown all of our 
dialup (we sent most of them to NAC), we had far more than 30 active accounts 
based on all RADIUS logs. I don't know how in this day and age, but they were 
there and dialing in still up to the day I pulled the power on the AS5800, 
despite customers being warned.

Ah, memories... now I'm thinking back when I ran a BBS on Fidonet... FOSSIL 
drivers, Frontdoor, echomail. :) Now those were the days!

-Vinny

-Original Message-
From: NANOG [mailto:nanog-boun...@nanog.org] On Behalf Of Alex Rubenstein
Sent: Thursday, March 5, 2015 10:10 AM
To: Matthew Crocker; Nick Hilliard
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Subject: RE: optical gear cooling requirements

It is interesting where this conversation turned. But for history's sake...

NAC started on PM2e with Microcom's, and then USR Sportster. I remember USR 
sending us PROM chips to change from 28.8 to 33.6. After that, PM3's. We were 
early PM3 users, working with Megazone on an almost continuous basis to work on 
bugs. We tried the PM4, that went nowhere. Then we tried Assured Access - it 
had promise but ultimately was no good. Ultimately, went to used AS5800's with 
ChDS3 cards, which ran from a long time ago until just a couple months ago when 
we finally (and literally) pulled the plug on dialup (I think we had about 30 
active accounts from a peak of over 35,000). 

There was a time where NAC was by far the largest customer of the LEC portion 
of Sprint in NJ, with two DS3's of PRI's out of NWTNJ alone (look that up, it's 
in the woods in 07860). Sprint had to actually buy software upgrades for the 
DMS we were out of to accommodate a hunt-group that large (or, so we were 
told). This was after we had about 700 POTS lines to a house and they begged us 
to move to the CO. 

Ahh, the good old days. And it is amazing how well it all worked, in 
retrospect, and how much fun the business was. Then you see things like "Net 
Neutrality", and it makes me want to hide in the woods and shed a tear.


> >> We used Livingston Portmaster 3 back in the day. Front to back 
> >> ventilation, ran cool as a cucumber, plug it in and it just worked.
> >> Awesome gear until Lucent bought the company to kill the product in 
> >> favor of their Ascend TNT space heaters.


RE: optical gear cooling requirements

2015-03-05 Thread Alex Rubenstein
It is interesting where this conversation turned. But for history's sake...

NAC started on PM2e with Microcom's, and then USR Sportster. I remember USR 
sending us PROM chips to change from 28.8 to 33.6. After that, PM3's. We were 
early PM3 users, working with Megazone on an almost continuous basis to work on 
bugs. We tried the PM4, that went nowhere. Then we tried Assured Access - it 
had promise but ultimately was no good. Ultimately, went to used AS5800's with 
ChDS3 cards, which ran from a long time ago until just a couple months ago when 
we finally (and literally) pulled the plug on dialup (I think we had about 30 
active accounts from a peak of over 35,000). 

There was a time where NAC was by far the largest customer of the LEC portion 
of Sprint in NJ, with two DS3's of PRI's out of NWTNJ alone (look that up, it's 
in the woods in 07860). Sprint had to actually buy software upgrades for the 
DMS we were out of to accommodate a hunt-group that large (or, so we were 
told). This was after we had about 700 POTS lines to a house and they begged us 
to move to the CO. 

Ahh, the good old days. And it is amazing how well it all worked, in 
retrospect, and how much fun the business was. Then you see things like "Net 
Neutrality", and it makes me want to hide in the woods and shed a tear.


> >> We used Livingston Portmaster 3 back in the day. Front to back
> >> ventilation, ran cool as a cucumber, plug it in and it just worked.
> >> Awesome gear until Lucent bought the company to kill the product in
> >> favor of their Ascend TNT space heaters.



Re: optical gear cooling requirements

2015-03-04 Thread Matthew Crocker
> 
> On Mar 4, 2015, at 4:54 PM, Nick Hilliard  wrote:
> 
> On 04/03/2015 21:33, Jay Hennigan wrote:
>> We used Livingston Portmaster 3 back in the day. Front to back
>> ventilation, ran cool as a cucumber, plug it in and it just worked.
>> Awesome gear until Lucent bought the company to kill the product in
>> favor of their Ascend TNT space heaters.
> 
> Ascend kit was a horror to deal with.  I ran isdn dialin on some of their
> lower end kit at one stage.  It only worked because I put it on a power
> timer which power-cycled it twice a day.
> 
> +1 on portmasters, though.
> 

My ISP grew up on Livingston Postmaster 2e & 3s.  I even had a Postmaster 4 for 
a bit.   Lucent swapped that out for an APX 8000.I still have an Ascend TNT 
running the remainder of my modem pool. 8 Active users on it at the moment.

Recently won a state contract for IP services.  The very first order was for a 
chunk of dialup accounts so the Department of Conservation and Recreation could 
call in from their firepowers.

It just keeps chugging away in a forgotten corner of my datacenter.

> Nick
> 
> 




Re: optical gear cooling requirements

2015-03-04 Thread Colin Johnston
energis pop the cab doors would not open due to heat warping after loaded with 
two tnt max

colin

Sent from my iPhone

> On 4 Mar 2015, at 21:04, "Ricky Beam"  wrote:
> 
>> On Tue, 03 Mar 2015 20:52:44 -0500, Martin Hannigan  
>> wrote:
>> Remember the Ascend MAX TNT and the sideways left-right airflow?
> ...
> 
> Indeed I do. I see you've heard the story of PSINet melting components as 
> well.
> 
> We used USR(3Com) TotalControl hardware: vertical venting. The chimney effect 
> was impressive. (65F in, 100+ -- sometimes 120 -- out.)
> 
> (I've complained for over a decade about $DAYJOB building crap with 
> side-to-side venting.)
> 
> --Ricky


Re: optical gear cooling requirements

2015-03-04 Thread Nick Hilliard
On 04/03/2015 21:33, Jay Hennigan wrote:
> We used Livingston Portmaster 3 back in the day. Front to back
> ventilation, ran cool as a cucumber, plug it in and it just worked.
> Awesome gear until Lucent bought the company to kill the product in
> favor of their Ascend TNT space heaters.

Ascend kit was a horror to deal with.  I ran isdn dialin on some of their
lower end kit at one stage.  It only worked because I put it on a power
timer which power-cycled it twice a day.

+1 on portmasters, though.

Nick



RE: optical gear cooling requirements

2015-03-04 Thread Naslund, Steve
>> On Tue, 03 Mar 2015 20:52:44 -0500, Martin Hannigan 
>> 
>> wrote:
>>> Remember the Ascend MAX TNT and the sideways left-right airflow?
>> ...
>> 
>> Indeed I do. I see you've heard the story of PSINet melting components 
>> as well.
>> 
>> We used USR(3Com) TotalControl hardware: vertical venting. The chimney 
>> effect was impressive. (65F in, 100+ -- sometimes 120 -- out.)

TotalControl stuff was a tank but to get the density you need, you had to give 
them "TotalControl" of all of your rack space.

>We used Livingston Portmaster 3 back in the day. Front to back ventilation, 
>ran cool as a cucumber, plug it in and it just worked.
>Awesome gear until Lucent bought the company to kill the product in favor of 
>their Ascend TNT space heaters.

Yep, we called them the "Livingstones" because they were stone age stuff but 
would never die.  We had TONS is issues with the Ascend stuff.  On the Ascend 
Max stuff we had a big problem with their power supplies blowing up.  After 
lots of research we found the same third party supplier and ordered the same 
voltage with twice the current capacity and had no more problems.  They refused 
to acknowledge that the power supplies were sized too small even after we 
proved it by replacing them with third party stuff.

We preferred the TotalControl stuff but in the days of the modem standards 
wars, certain modems worked better with Ascend and some with USR so we 
maintained some of both.  We were in firmware fix hell on both the USRs and the 
Ascends for a period of years.

Steven Naslund
Chicago IL



RE: optical gear cooling requirements

2015-03-04 Thread Naslund, Steve
I remember that there was an Ascend DSLAM built on the same chassis and it was 
collocated by someone into Ameritech central offices.  Ameritech shut them all 
down saying that there was no way, no how that the device could be NEBS 
compliant.  I don't know how that fight ever turned out, they were not ours.  
Side to side airflow is really bad news.  Even with vertical you could at least 
mount some kind of baffles and lose a few Us. With side to side it is really 
hard to find a way to redirect air with the flanges in the way.

Steven Naslund
Chicago IL

> Remember the Ascend MAX TNT and the sideways left-right airflow?
>...



Re: optical gear cooling requirements

2015-03-04 Thread Jay Hennigan
On 3/4/15 13:04, Ricky Beam wrote:
> On Tue, 03 Mar 2015 20:52:44 -0500, Martin Hannigan 
> wrote:
>> Remember the Ascend MAX TNT and the sideways left-right airflow?
> ...
> 
> Indeed I do. I see you've heard the story of PSINet melting components
> as well.
> 
> We used USR(3Com) TotalControl hardware: vertical venting. The chimney
> effect was impressive. (65F in, 100+ -- sometimes 120 -- out.)

We used Livingston Portmaster 3 back in the day. Front to back
ventilation, ran cool as a cucumber, plug it in and it just worked.
Awesome gear until Lucent bought the company to kill the product in
favor of their Ascend TNT space heaters.

-- 
--
Jay Hennigan - CCIE #7880 - Network Engineering - j...@impulse.net
Impulse Internet Service  -  http://www.impulse.net/
Your local telephone and internet company - 805 884-6323 - WB6RDV


Re: optical gear cooling requirements

2015-03-04 Thread Ricky Beam
On Tue, 03 Mar 2015 20:52:44 -0500, Martin Hannigan   
wrote:

Remember the Ascend MAX TNT and the sideways left-right airflow?

...

Indeed I do. I see you've heard the story of PSINet melting components as  
well.


We used USR(3Com) TotalControl hardware: vertical venting. The chimney  
effect was impressive. (65F in, 100+ -- sometimes 120 -- out.)


(I've complained for over a decade about $DAYJOB building crap with  
side-to-side venting.)


--Ricky


Re: optical gear cooling requirements

2015-03-03 Thread Chris Adams
Once upon a time, Martin Hannigan  said:
> Remember the Ascend MAX TNT and the sideways left-right airflow? The
> preferred method of deployment was three tall in a two post rack, mid
> mount.

Shoot, only three tall?  With the original dual-slot modem cards and
separate HDLC cards, it took three chassis just to handle one DS3.
Throw another couple in there to start the next DS3 and get cooking!  Of
course, they came in the crate with that little piece of sheet metal air
deflector that I don't think I ever saw how to mount.

We had something (Redback SMS-500?) that also cooled side-to-side, but
in the opposite direction; had to make sure it was "upwind" of the TNTs.
-- 
Chris Adams 


Re: optical gear cooling requirements

2015-03-03 Thread Martin Hannigan
Alex,

Remember the Ascend MAX TNT and the sideways left-right airflow? The
preferred method of deployment was three tall in a two post rack, mid
mount. At the end of about the 10th row you could literally cook a steak
and subsequently burn out the gear beyond that point. We fashioned our own
dividers to keep airflow from forming a jet down the line via ACE hardware
angle brackets that we cored to EIA screw spec and sheets of 1/4"
plexiglass mounted between. Cheap as heck and worked like a champ. Airflow
redirection can work.

Building a plenum for this could be relatively cheap and easy with a small
amount of sheet metal and a pair of tin sheers. Don't forget the warranty;
I'd check for anything explicit around airflow.

Let us know what you do, love the innovation.

Best,

-M<




On Tue, Mar 3, 2015 at 9:27 AM, Alex Rubenstein  wrote:

> The rock has turned over for a moment and I have crawled out. It is good
> to see the sunlight from time to time.
>
> Those who know me know my life has gotten away from networking and that
> sort of thing, and I am fully immersed in datacenter design and
> construction for IT type loads (blades, compute, disk, etc.). However, I am
> presented with the challenge of having to deal with some optical gear
> (Ciena stuff, mainly). My question: have the optical folks woken up and
> made things cool front to back, or are they still in to the bottom to top
> world?
>
> Comments and lambasting: go
>
> Thanks!
>
>
>
>
>


Re: optical gear cooling requirements

2015-03-03 Thread Edward Salonia
Cisco makes an Air Plenum for front/back air flow.

- M6 chassis:
http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/optical/hardware/15454install/guide/hig15454/hig_15454M6.html#pgfId-863233
- M2 chassis:
http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/optical/hardware/15454install/guide/hig15454/hig_15454M2.html#pgfId-628924




On Tue, Mar 3, 2015 at 9:27 AM, Alex Rubenstein  wrote:

> The rock has turned over for a moment and I have crawled out. It is good
> to see the sunlight from time to time.
>
> Those who know me know my life has gotten away from networking and that
> sort of thing, and I am fully immersed in datacenter design and
> construction for IT type loads (blades, compute, disk, etc.). However, I am
> presented with the challenge of having to deal with some optical gear
> (Ciena stuff, mainly). My question: have the optical folks woken up and
> made things cool front to back, or are they still in to the bottom to top
> world?
>
> Comments and lambasting: go
>
> Thanks!
>
>
>
>
>


Re: optical gear cooling requirements

2015-03-03 Thread Christopher Morrow
On Tue, Mar 3, 2015 at 2:51 PM, Rob Seastrom  wrote:
>
> You can always put baffles above and beneath to channel the air
> into/from your hot/cold aisles.  Makes it nice to be able to have the
> connectors on whichever side is convenient.

or you know, rotate the equipment in the rack...


Re: optical gear cooling requirements

2015-03-03 Thread Rob Seastrom

Alex Rubenstein  writes:

> My question: have the
> optical folks woken up and made things cool front to back, or are
> they still in to the bottom to top world?

Unless something's changed, AT&T NEDS still reads "Systems exhausting
more than 50 W/sq ft must exhaust the air vertically.".

You can always put baffles above and beneath to channel the air
into/from your hot/cold aisles.  Makes it nice to be able to have the
connectors on whichever side is convenient.

-r




optical gear cooling requirements

2015-03-03 Thread Alex Rubenstein
The rock has turned over for a moment and I have crawled out. It is good to see 
the sunlight from time to time.

Those who know me know my life has gotten away from networking and that sort of 
thing, and I am fully immersed in datacenter design and construction for IT 
type loads (blades, compute, disk, etc.). However, I am presented with the 
challenge of having to deal with some optical gear (Ciena stuff, mainly). My 
question: have the optical folks woken up and made things cool front to back, 
or are they still in to the bottom to top world?

Comments and lambasting: go

Thanks!