Questions about setting up a new dial-in + telnet BBS reddit / bbs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AND_MY_HAX · 2020-05-17 19:24 I've been doing research on dial-up modems and had questions about setting up a BBS that supports both dial-in and telnet for the fun of it. I'm planning on using a i386-based host with MS-DOS or OS/2. I've read through the FAQ and checked out the software available, but it looks like most of the ones widely used today have completely dropped support for dial-in. Of the BBS software available, which is the easiest to set up for both dial-in and telnet? EleBBS seems attractive, while Renegade on OS/2 seems to have a clear path to setting up telnet connections. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mokey-fraggle · 2020-05-17 19:35 Im trying to remember. I used to run renegade. I found it easy to setup. If your going to run doors I seem to remember spitfire or telegard being the most compatible. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- unsignedmark · 2020-05-17 20:32 How much of the PSTN is still alive in your area? I’m genuinely curious, since where I live it’s practically impossible to get a real analogue phone connection today. Even companies advertising “landlines” are actually just selling VoIP boxes that allow you to connect telephones, not a real phone line. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AND_MY_HAX · 2020-05-17 20:50 I'm not sure, actually. My plan is to use a VoLTE bridge that exposes a phone jack (such as [this](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PLSTM1K)) to get relatively high quality audio that won't be as susceptible to packet loss as VoIP. Really have no idea if this will work out, but I'm fairly confident it will work *in some form*, which is all I'm really out to achieve. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- myself248 · 2020-05-18 00:35 Before worrying about BBS anything, test the modem part. Just call one from another straight from plain old terminal software, and send a few files over xmodem or something. If that actually works as you suspect, then put some BBS software behind it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AND_MY_HAX · 2020-05-18 02:37 Fair point! Any moment of dropped audio would be a big issue. Based on my own experiences with making calls that doesn't seem to happen with decent reception, though I could be wrong. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- RolandMT32 · 2020-05-18 04:20 I don't think EleBBS has been very actively maintained in a while. [Synchronet](http://wiki.synchro.net) is a modern BBS package that runs on Windows and Linux (and could probably be built on other \*NIX- style operating systems) and supports telnet, etc. Synchronet also has a software program (called "[sexpots](https://wiki.synchro.net/util:sexpots)", for Synchronet EXternal Plain Old Telephone Service) that accepts modem connections and redirects them to a telnet node, so it can support both telnet and modem dialup connections. I think Synchronet's sexpots can work with other BBS packages too. [Mystic](http://www.mysticbbs.com) is another popular modern BBS package, and I think I've heard of sysops using Synchronet's sexpots with it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- RolandMT32 · 2020-05-18 04:23 Most DOS BBS doors support a standard drop file, such as DOOR.SYS etc.. I currently run Synchronet, which has support for many common drop files and works with about 99% of doors I've set up. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- unsignedmark · 2020-05-18 06:08 You can’t do it, unfortunately :( even though it’s “high-quality audio”, it’s audio that has been encoded and then reproduced by a voice codec. A modem needs the full 3KHz audio passband of a phoneline to survive unaltered to be able to work, and that’s fundamentally not how modern phone systems work. It’s all highly compressed to save bandwidth. To compress voice, “useless” information is thrown away, and the high-frequency noise-like output of a modem looks completely useless to a voice codec, since it’s very unrelated to human speech. It’s a damn shame. In theory, it’s possible for it to work if the carrier on both end of the line use a lossless or uncompressed voice transfer mechanism like PCM and also have very low latency jitter, but in practice I have never seen this implemented. If you do make it work, please let me know, I would be very interested in which carriers were used. Just wanted to warn you though, before you spend a lot of money on something that is almost certain not to work. Source: I design and produce modems. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- JohnPolka · 2020-05-18 09:04 Yes, SEXPOTS will work with any BBS that supports telnet. It just redirects the modem connection to a specified telnet address and port. It also supports raw connections (instead of telnet) too. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- JohnPolka · 2020-05-18 09:10 While on the topic of dial-up... How many of you here still use dial- up? I see only 26/770 BBSs support dial-up in the "Telnet BBS Guide". For those running a BBS with dial-up, how often do you get a modem caller? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2020-05-18 12:20 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- roonie12 · 2020-05-18 14:33 Maximus under OS/2 running great for both dialup and telnet ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FozzTexx · 2020-05-18 15:43 > For those running a BBS with dial-up, how often do you get a modem caller? Just a few times a day. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AND_MY_HAX · 2020-05-18 16:09 Definitely understand that. I want to set it up more for the fun of it than for actually expecting significant traffic. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AND_MY_HAX · 2020-05-18 17:17 Gotcha. Wouldn't the training on V.34 would be able to work around losses at higher frequencies (even though it would reduce the bitrate)? I'm aware it won't be perfect, I assume a real landline is needed for the full 33.6kbps. Wouldn't think there should be any issue with, at the minimum, a basic V.21 connection though (aside from usability). Definitely want to run tests to see how it works, though I'll need someone with a real POTS connection to dial-in. If you're curious, [this](https://www.verizon.com/home-office-solutions/wireless-home- phone-lvp2/) is the specific model of 4G->Phone bridge I ordered, which claims to work for group 3 fax. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- unsignedmark · 2020-05-18 17:48 Sorry, I can see I wrote that a bit unclear. It’s not high frequencies as in “high pitched tones”, it’s __high frequency information__, so a high rate of change in the waveform sent over the channel (that could either be tone or “volume”, modems need both to change rapidly to work). Turns out human speech really doesn’t change that much (we don’t speak at 4000 bytes per second), and that’s fundamentally why speech can be compressed a lot, and still sound great on the other end. Modems however, do speak at that rate to each other, so if you try to shove their signalling down a highly-compressed digital voice codec, the physical laws of information theory come biting you in the rear, and you will never be able to transmit more data than what the codec bitrate is. And even that is near impossible, since it would require insanely specific tuning to the internals of the voice codec. I’ve toyed with the idea of implementing it. It’s insane stuff, especially since most voice codecs are proprietary, and you don’t know which ones are in use on a given network at a given time. Also consider that most digital and cellular voice lines and phone systems employ heavy noise cancellation. What does a highly efficient modulation scheme sound like? Noise (again a fundamental physical aspect of information encoding). So it will probably be wiped out by the noise canceller before even making it to the codec. So even very low speeds are impossible over compressed voice codecs. I make a modem that utilises very robust encoding at the maddingly slow speed of 300 bits per second, that can cross thousands of kilometers over shortwave radio, in a very narrow channel. Put it through the cell phone network? It breaks. There are however methods, and maybe, just maybe something like that has been employed in the product you linked, and the underlying service that it runs on. There is a ITU specification for passing fax over cellular networks and IP systems in general, that works very well (I’ve implemented this for several companies), and is probably what they are using for fax compatibility. There is also ITU recommendation V.150.1: “Modem-over-IP networks: Procedures for the end-to-end connection of V-series DCEs”, which in short means: Here’s how you should connect V-series modems over IP- based networks. It’s all in there, pretty simple (in the relative scope of things in telecommunications) to implement. And as far as I know, no carrier in the entire damned world has implemented this, and if it turns out I am wrong, it would be very exciting indeed! If you do go ahead and try this out, I am very, very interested to hear your results, and sincerely hope you’ll let me know about your findings! Link to V.150.1 is you’re interested: https://www.itu.int/rec/dologin_ pub.asp?lang=e&id=T-REC-V.150.1-200301-I!!PDF-E&type=items ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AND_MY_HAX · 2020-05-18 18:11 Wow, thank you for the very detailed explanation! I'll definitely follow up with my results. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- unsignedmark · 2020-05-18 19:54 Thanks :) I’ll look forward to hearing about it! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AND_MY_HAX · 2020-05-20 00:47 You were right! It's not as clean of a connection as I'd hoped. On dialing out, I'm seeing a large amount of glitching with a V.21 connection (curiously, only on the TX channel, RX is fine). However, V.22 seemed to work fine, as has V.32. The VoLTE bridge seems to notice when a connection is made with V.32 and displays a note on the screen about a fax connection - not sure if it's doing anything with that. I had some trouble with V.34, though (sounded like a few training sequences before it gave up). I'll compile a list of which modulations and bitrates work when I get a bit of time. Note: I've been using the Seattle Community Network BBS for testing. EDIT: I think the V.34/V.90 failure may be due to the fact that some of the initial handshake is transmitted as V.21, which seems to be having issues. I think everything else is actually working quite well. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- unsignedmark · 2020-05-21 13:25 Very interesting stuff, thanks a lot for sharing your findings! Yes, as far as I remember, the initial handshake on V.34 is straight up V.21, so you are probably right. Quite interesting that it fails though. I'd guess that it's probably detecting V.32, and then doing something behind the scenes to put the entire line into a mode suitable for modem connections. I wonder if it could be "tricked" to go into that mode, and then start setting up a connection in one of the faster modes... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ryanknut · 2020-08-02 19:34 did you ever get this set up? just fixed my Windows 98/dos pc ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AND_MY_HAX · 2020-08-03 00:12 Can't say I have yet. Ran into serious issues with my phone connection - wasn't stable enough to warrant trying to get a server going. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ryanknut · 2020-08-03 02:28 ah, that sucks ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ryanknut · 2020-08-03 02:28 and happy cake day!