technology, networking and IP telephony
Nortel Backbone Concentrator Node (BCN) and Site Manager
Yes, I still have three Backbone Concentrator Nodes (BCN) hanging around the place, still working just the same as the day they were installed some 13 years ago.
We had an issue tonight with a Verizon ATM DS-3 circuit on one of our BCN routers. The issue forced me to take a little nostalgia trip so I thought I would see if anyone else still has any AN/ARN/ASN/BLN/BCN routers still installed in their network.
It had been so long since I had done any work on these beasts that I didn’t even have Site Manager installed on my desktop. Yes, you heard me right Site Manager! Thankfully the CLI interface, Bay Command Console (BCC), isn’t too bad but there are a few things you can’t do in the CLI or that are much easier in Site Manager.
I installed Site Manager v15.5.x without any issues, it still installs into C:\SM, isn’t that so quaint. I added two of my BCNs into the connection list and with the press of F5 (Dynamic Configuration) I was off and running. Have a look at the the image below. I still remember all those T1 and serial interfaces not to mention all those DSU/CSUs stacked high in the adjacent cabinet. It’s amazing how far things have progressed in 13 years when you think about Wide Area Networking.
I can remember when 56Kbps lease lines were the norm and T1 lines (1.54Mbps) were the king. Fast forward to 2010 and I only have about 3 T1 lines left in the data center from probably a high of about 31 when we still had our OC-48 SONET ring. Gone are the T1 circuits and the SONET muxes and in their place are a whole lot of dark fiber and Layer 3 switching/routing.
It might be hard to see but that’s a Gigabit interface (1000BaseSX) in slot 10 on that router with an FRE4 processor… those were the days. I’m still doing a few high speed interfaces along with BGP if you can believe it! The introduction of the Accelar and Passport products really left these legacy routers relegated to providing slow speed WAN connectivity.
Is anyone else still using their AN/ASN/ARN/BLN/BCN routers?
Cheers!
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- #3 written by Michael Roberts 1 year ago
- #5 written by Sandor 1 year ago
One of our customers insists on his ASN router.
It has E1 (Europe) interfaces and one 100BaseT Ethernet (non-autonegotiate of course). It works for 7×24 hours more then eight years ago.
I said him there is no support anymore for that device. He said this device survives Bay Networks support and Nortel Networks support too and maybe us too :) - #9 written by Curtis 1 year ago
Still have an ARN and an AN on both ends of a 56kb PPP circuit. Just took 3 AN routers out of service last month when we no longer needed the locations terminating 56kb Frame Relay connections (which also got rid of my last Frame Relay cloud – another disappearing technology.
I also at one time had several ASN routers. Oh, those were the days – IPX, BOT (Bisync over TCP), DLSw, SDLC – protocols I used to use with these routers (and I had to buy the full routing license to get BOT originally – remember the three Nortel routing license levels), but along with 208 BSC modems, no longer used – YEA!
Yes, those were the days… we probably had about about 7 BCNs with HSSI DS-3 interfaces and around 30 AN/ARN/ASN routers with a lot of T1 PtP and Fractional (512Kbps) T1 Frame Relay.
We had access to the corporate software suite so we never had to worry about the feature sets. Although we originally ran ATM on the BCNs which were connected to our ATM LAN of Centillion 100 switches.
Look how fast technology has progressed in only 10 years.
- #11 written by John Kramer 1 year ago
Hi John,
You’ve brought back some really ugly memories of DSQMS. I don’t think I’m going to be able to sleep all night now after recalling all the nightmares trying to get Bay’s support folks to provide adequate documentation on DSQMS. That was the very very early days of IP telephony with the purple barney i2004 phones.
Thanks for the comment!
Wow- You guys are old school- We actually still are selling this Nortel gear. I guess the Military is still running some of this stuff to keep their WOPR running. It seems most people are still looking for the FRE4-32-64 or 128 meg with a SX or LX uplink (AG2204024) or we have had quite a few requests for the AC power supplies. If you guys do need any of this vintage gear- or newer stuff we may have it. I do need an old school expert to help my 20 something cisco Tech to really get a handle on testing this gear- Any takers?
Hi Chris,
We’ll keep you in mind if we decide to sell any gear. With respect to testing the cards, it’s pretty easy. Just put the cards in any working chassis and the card will run through a POST sequence where it performs all sorts of tests. If the card boots up and passes the POST test sequence you should be good to go. I’ve never seen a specific port die but I’m sure it’s possible.
Good Luck!
- #15 written by Bruno Vieira Barreto 1 year ago
Hi Michael,
Yeah man, I do manage a lot of those old gear in a DCN Network of a Telecom in LATAM (They form an E1 network with a huge span over three countries):
06 x BCNs
04 x BLN
80 x ARNsThey’re really plain network gear. No real tricks, except for the site manager, which of course is realy bad when you’re used to CLIs. Since we run both IP and OSI protocols (for old SDH management) and it’s support for OSI configuration via CLI is NONE, this makes the CLI fanbase (which includes me) cry out loud when site manager is a mandatory tool.
About hardware stability, they run pretty cool here. Once in a year or less we have some kind of issues in a E1 card (mainly in the ARNs, the FE1 – fractional E1 – cards) but we had an BCN running for 3 years in a roll without problems (We had to move it to another datacenter, but I guess that it would take more 5 years of punishiment!).By the way, we’re trying to get rid of it because spares can be a hell in LATAM… Replacing those huge BCNs for smooth, quiet and short Cisco’s 2821/2811 will be hard, but besides missing it, we’ll get over it! hehehehe! :)
- #17 written by Bruce Wheeless 11 months ago
Hi Don,
There was a custom image/software builder that allowed you to strip various components out of the software build. If the software is straight from Nortel then it should support the FRE2 processor. It was the ARE and FRE4 processors that you might need a specific version of software.
Good Luck!
- #21 written by Tommy 6 months ago
- #24 written by Tommy 6 months ago
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Hi Michael, We still have an ASN and a few ARNs and ANs in use. We were up to about 13 T1s before we started with IP solutions from AT&T to replace the T1s and DS3s. I too found myself loading Site Mangler back in March to look at a Router that mysteriously stopped responding. I was guessing it had been running for 4 or 5 years since it was last rebooted. We did have a BLN that we retired in 2003, at the time the maintenance from Nortel was almost 4K a year. Good times! Sean