Cisco Aironet 350 Wireless Bridges

"... a brief stint in Windows installers. It's a miracle that anything ever gets installed." Aw, c'mon, you can't leave us hanging like that!

I wanna see the GigaStackifacation of the retro rack! lol

I worked at Cisco TAC during the time when these things were popular. Consumers hated us because the drivers for the Aironet PCMCIA cards were locked behind an active contract and the default warranty was only 30 days. So we'd get calls from regular people who had got ahold of these and needed drivers for them, and we had no way of giving them the access they needed. They changed that policy for Aironet around 2004 IIRC

Fun fact, modern catalyst switches running iOS use the command "show power-inline" to view the PoE budget for a switch. I wonder if that's a holdover from the days of inline power... Also curious if that command exists on your 3524...

Also, please do some more with the ASA5505s! I cut my teeth on those and their direct replacement, which was the ASA5506-X. The 5505s were bullet proof at the time, they just aged out and lost support from Cisco (EoL). I'm sure there's thousands of them still out there though.

I don't know if you're a ham or not, but we use those IP phones for SIP into our radio network. They're really a lot of fun...

Woah! I worked with some of this Aironet equipment years ago so the web interface was very familiar. I had no idea that default SSID was tsunami, though this was the SSID that was in use when I inherited this equipment. Looking back I’m not surprised that the people that initially set it up left the default. 🤦‍♂️ Then again, some of the locations had open networks. Yeah, I corrected that very quickly.

The cage nuts and rack screws ASMR was nice, keep it up. 🤜🤛.
The professional network engineers always land the bottom screws on a piece of network equipment.... Then top screws after once the hand is free 😂

Don't run those too long without an antenna. it's not great for those wireless front ends - they'll burn out eventually if the radio is enabled.

I work for Cisco and Ive got some older meraki stuff that I've used in my home lab that has since been upgraded to current generation equipment, if you're interested in it it shoot me a DM.

I have 256MB flash drive

hey btw, not that i condone it but massgrave supports windows 7 now

Instead of static IPs configured on the devices with DHCP support I'd do static IP reservations on the DHCP server itself. So if you want to change network or IPs later you'll only need to modify the DHCP server settings.

Loved the story about wireless bridging with your upstairs neighbor, setups like these are amazing and so satisfying when they work just like that.
Did the exact same thing (albeit more cursed) to share my mom's network at my grandma's place about 200 meters away. No line of sight, unable to set up a wired network, but next to the house is an old shed which shares the power wiring with my grandma's house, so in there I set up a WR841N with OpenWRT (wireless client connected to AP at my mom's and bridged to LAN), which in turn is hooked up to a powerline adapter. Then, 100 meters away over 40's aluminium wiring, the powerline adapter on the other end at grandma's house is connected to a router acting as an AP.
Overall sketchy as hell, with two wireless links and a powerline adapter inbetween but has been working rock solid for over two years, no reboots needed. Getting 77 Mbps down and 51 Mbps up over that cursed setup!

I had to use WiFi bridge recently. Modded my old TP-Link with OpenWRT. It worked just fine with decent speeds

Definite yes to a video on the ASA!

And maybeee...some...old coax Ethernet here or there? :D

I'm sure there will be a government department or papermill somewhere in 2050 still running a Cisco 3500XL or even more likely a 2950 without any plans to replace it.

I would love to see video of that ASA!

Cisco did create a version of POE before the standard existed. Hence "Pre-standard POE"

Bottom screws first, my dude, trust me. :)

The way I describe why they devices have dual antennas is one of the benifits two ears. Sometimes a signal will run into some interferance, but radio waves can take multiple paths and that second path may not have interferance. The MIMO spec describes this better than I do. However the Wi-Fi spec didn't offically support MIMO tell 802.11ac

Ima still using a 350 as an AP together w two Toshiba T200 pen devices each equipped w an Aironet PCMCIA talking to each other via Trumpet Winsock W 3.11 for Pen Computers based. Works very well. That's rly retro I'd say. Cheers.

i wonder, is wifi over BNC/TNC possible?

Need to get some cable minders installed in that rack. Routing patch cords outside the rails hurts my OCD eyes 😝😝

Man I worked on some of these back in the day at my first IT job. We had a wireless bridge between some high rise buildings in our downtown with some yagi antennas inside the windows on both ends. Also had a slightly newer bridge that went about a quarter mile to our gas station. Both worked very well!! Pushed VoIP over one of them!

For lighter equipment you might want to look into Rack Studs. They're easier to work with than cage nuts IMO.

ASA5505, the successor to the PIX501, were solid. We had dozens of them deployed. Great for fixed always-on IPSEC tunnels at remote sites. I have a stack of them waiting to be wiped and tossed, the last two which were only decommissioned last year. They had 5 years of uptime since the last ASA software update for them was in 2019. Mind you, these were on private fiber networks and not accessible to any other networks (including the Internet), but there were regulatory reasons to encrypt before leaving the physical security boundaries.

In case you want to set up an ancient version of CallManager, check out the video I made on it!

It hurts to see the 1U switch across two U's :D
Also screw in the bottom screws first, then gravity will holt the switch in place while you fasten the top screws

We used these around 2000 for our isp started off with the aironet bridges. We had a network that covered almost the entire panhandle of texas. It was crazy what you could do back then when there was hardly any noise in 2.4ghz.

If you pull the radios apart your find out they are just a little SBC with a pcmcia slot with one of the same pcmcia cards in it. They just dont have the plastic antennas on the end and have to connectors. Same as the client cards if you break the plastic bit off the end.

Just a tip (not sure if other's may have mentioned), when racking with the ears like that, start with the two lower screws, then you don't need to hold it up. The weight will be held by the ears without problem, and you won't have to contort your arm longer than necessary. Reveres for removal. Your elbows will thank you :)

When racking some heavy gear alone, it helps when temporarely mounting a cable management rail below for the stuff to rest on while setting the screws. And start with the bottom screws of course.

Run a speed test over the wifi bridge!

I literally have a box of like 15 of those ASAs by my desk at work haha

i used to have to use a telzon when I worked in the supermarket. if you messed up the transmission you were screwed and had to rescan everything.

This is Wifi Mesh of that era I guess. Asus that I know has this technology, on their product 😅😅😅

Essentially this is the opposite of a wifi router

I tried config'ing an Aironet AP till I learned it had a tiny gui I could enable lol

Speedtest please...

Seeing tsunami brought back so many college memories.

I'm still using DD-WRT today, albeit on a modern router.

Works great. It fully handles my gigabit connection at full speed, and only uses 50% CPU. It does some very advanced features like QOS as well.

That Cisco VoIP phone looks like it's a standard SIP phone, so you should be able to to get it to make and receive phone calls from a VoiP provider. I'd try either Twilio, or Vitelity, which service low-volume DIYers like yourself. If you have trouble, you can fire up wireshark and do pcaps.

I owned lots of those WRT54G with opensource firmware. I was so excited when i young to be able to do so many things of a little blue vs running a fully computer

when racking up, always start with the bottom screws. they will hold the gear in place.

Good old RPTNC connectors... Hateful stuff.

Ahh something I worked with made it to the channel…. 😅

Fun fact: Apple offered their first Mac with gigabit ethernet all the way back in 2000, and that model is simply referred to as the Power Mac G4 (Gigabit Ethernet). I even had one once upon a time. Apple also did not offer gigabit in the mini until they made the Intel switch in 2005-6, incidentally. It's always irked me a bit that they never updated that in the G4 mini even so many years later and that if I want to play with one on my home network, I have to take steps to avoid having it slow that whole segment down. Fortunately, I have a Raspberry Pi 4 set up to share a wireless connection with anything plugged into its ethernet port, so I can use that to get any old retro system online without penalty!

I miss the Linksys cable modem I had and the wrt54g around 2004 I was 20 and living in Milwaukee wi then

Microcenter has great Network stuff for sale

Wireless bridge enabled the development of broadband in the Czech Republic. Around the year 2000, it was basically impossible to get a fixed connection in the Czech Republic (the monopoly of Telecom, which did not innovate). A few people then came up with the idea of CzFree - a wireless community network. They started to build long PtP or PtMP lines using DIY wifi. The first antennas were made from sausage cans and allowed to connect to omnidirectional antennas for several hundred meters. With large dishes it was no problem to connect even villages and towns for several kilometers. The first routers used were built on old PCs running Linux (PCI wifi card XI-626). Users then put the PCI card directly into the PC and ran a several meter long coaxial cable to an antenna on the roof or outside the window. Alternatively, an old PC with Linuo was put in the attic and served as client and router at the same time (no NAT but routing so that everyone had an IP directly on their PC). The CzFree then shared expensive leased lines to the internet (often connected via expensive 10 Ghz links). Gradually cheap APs came along around 2003 that could be used as transparent clients (Ovislink 1120, Asus WL-500). CZFree communities were formed in almost every major city. More than 200 000 users - a large part of them were not nerds but regular users who wanted to get on the network (big intranet or Internet). Later when the state freed up the 5 Ghz band they started building connections in that band too. In CzFree there were also interesting projects like RONJA - a fiber optic link that could be built at home for 100 dollars. The link was full duplex and 10 Mbps! Built with just plastic sewer pipes and a cheap laser and magnifying glass - and it worked for miles. As more people joined czfree, some of them started to turn into commercial WISPs. Now there are over several hundred WISPs in the Czech Republic. There is no problem in any part of the country to get wirelessly 100 Mbps (or even gigabit over 60 Ghz). Today, the most used solutions are from Mikrotik (5 Ghz AC, 60 Ghz) or from Ubiqiutiy. If you want to know more feel free to email me!