Rack rails on network equipment

Sat Sep 25 23:52:18 UTC 2021

On Sat, Sep 25, 2021 at 04:23:38PM -0700, Jay Hennigan wrote:
> On 9/25/21 16:14, George Herbert wrote:
> >(Crying, thinking about racks and racks and racks of AT&T 56k modems 
> >strapped to shelves above PM-2E-30s???)
> 
> And all of their wall-warts [...]

You were doing it wrong, then.  :-)

ExecPC had this down to a science, and had used a large transformer
to power a busbar along the back of two 60-slot literature organizers,
with 4x PM2E30's on top, a modem in each slot, and they snipped off
the wall warts, using the supplied cable for power.  A vertical board
was added over the top so that the rears of the PM2s were exposed, and
the board provided a mounting point for an ethernet hub and three Amp
RJ21 breakouts.  This gave you a modem "pod" that held 120 USR Courier
56K modems, neatly cabled and easily serviced.  The only thing coming
to each of these racks was 3x AMP RJ21, 1x power, and 1x ethernet.

They had ten of these handling their 1200 (one thousand two hundred!)
modems before it got unmanageable, and part of that was that US Robotics
offered a deal that allowed them to be a testing site for Total Control.

At which point they promptly had a guy solder all the wall warts back on
to the power leads and proceeded to sell them at a good percentage of
original price to new Internet users.

The other problem was that they were getting near two full DS3's worth
of analog lines being delivered this way, and it was taking up a TON of
space.  A full "pod" could be reduced to 3x USR TC's, so two whole pods
could be replaced with a single rack of gear.

... JG
-- 
Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net
"The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way
through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that
democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'"-Asimov