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!