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Early Vid: Homelab T3 (Patreon)

Published:
2026-01-20 04:58:43
Imported:
2026-06

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Finally wrapped up the first video of 2026, setting up a real T3 connection down here in the homelab and doing a medium-to-deep-dive of T-Carrier and why it exists in a historical context.A huge thanks to everyone who left feedback on the early release of the T-Carrier history portion; I tried to incorporate changes but to be honest I'm tired and ready to move on to other videos, so I apologize if I didn't loop in the feedback as well as I could. I'll definitely use it going forward for these more "documentary" style videos.Anyway we'll see how long I can wait before releasing this one. My prediction is Wednesday.

Files

Setting up Homelab T3

Getting a real T3 connection going down here in the homelab. It runs at a blistering 44.7 Mbits per second, but is also capable of carrying over 600 phone calls. On the way we'll do a deep dive on the history of T-Carrier, specifically T1 and why AT&T invented T-Carrier in the first place. We'll use a bunch of Cisco 7200 routers to get the T3 connection working, including a very interesting Cisco 7201 with a single port adapter slot. Check me out on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/clabretro Sources: Many BSPs and Bell System articles from https://www.telecomarchive.com/ https://www.telephonecollectors.info/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d26n6-vVvA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wn71QBApCRg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBPTM_irIco https://long-lines.net/tech-equip/misc/Graybar103-0693.html https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~200183~3000108:Lines-Of-The-Bell-Telephone-Compani https://archive.org/details/bstj2-2-41 https://www.telephonecollectors.info/index.php/browse/bsps-bell-system/at-t-specifications/3209-at-t-spec-4455-public-telephone-signs-tl/file https://www.telephonecollectors.info/index.php/browse/ads/western-electric-ads/14633-1960s-ad-we-one-reason-youre-sure-of-connecting-pdf/file https://www.telephonecollectors.info/index.php/browse/document-repository/catalogs-manuals/bell-system-we/1794-weco-l5-carrier-tl/file https://telecomarchive.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/docs/bsp-archive/TR/53121_1975-11.pdf Bell_System_advertisement_in_Western_Electric_v1no1_News_March_1912_promoting_universal_service.jpg (2000×2800) https://ia801602.us.archive.org/9/items/bstj44-7-1405/bstj44-7-1405.pdf https://www.comsoc.org/engagement-community/committee/communications-history-standing-committee/communications-history/communications-history/history-articles https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/4c/fa/98/01824524c61246/US980356.pdf https://thepastpresented.com/index.php/2017/06/23/before-the-internet-five-conversations-on-one-pair-of-wires-1918/ https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=6685746 https://www.telephonecollectors.info/index.php/browse/document-repository/catalogs-manuals/bell-system-we/1794-weco-l5-carrier-tl/file https://www.construction-physics.com/p/building-the-bell-system https://www.telephonecollectors.info/index.php/browse/ads/western-electric-ads/14605-1960s-ad-we-there-are-4242-wires-in-this-cable-pdf/file Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio #netro #retrotech #retrocomputer #networking #homelab #cisco #telephony Serial to USB converter: https://amzn.to/4mAXDlJ Rack stuff StarTech Universal Rack Rails: https://amzn.to/404JV1Q StarTech 42U Rack: https://amzn.to/482c3oh StarTech 25U Rack: https://amzn.to/3mEB7hS Tripp Lite SMART1500LCD UPS: https://amzn.to/3KZW3Jw 1U 24 Port Patch Panel: https://amzn.to/3Nm0bFa 1U Brush Panel: https://amzn.to/3mExAA3 1U Rack Shelf: https://amzn.to/3oaDclT Video gear Camera: https://amzn.to/4al3xjA Main mics: https://amzn.to/4dCUuO2 Desk mic: https://amzn.to/3ye8BsV Note: The above are Amazon affiliate links. It doesn't cost you extra, but I'll receive a commission which will help keep the content coming. I only link to things I've personally ordered. 00:00 Intro 00:40 Cisco 7201 Overview 05:11 T-Carrier History 15:24 How T1 Works 24:24 Installing IOS on the Cisco 7201 32:26 Setting up a T3 Connection 40:23 T3 Speed Test 44:18 Future Plans 45:38 Final Thoughts

Comments

Jonathan Cilley

Love this content! Now you can branch out into the OC/SONNET optical side of this tech next!

Jack Beckman

Thanks for all the background info; just seeing the connection without the background would have been much less interesting.

Scott Klein

Can’t wait. I remember when having a T3 connection to your office was a recruiting asset. Hard to even think of something as slow as 45Mb today. I think even LTE is faster.

Thomas Eriksen

You mentioned repeaters, I have one Exline2 ELU and one Exline2-S NTU from ECI Telecom, they seem to convert between E1 and (S)HDSL, but I cannot find any information about these devices other than ebay listings… How do you do research on "nonexistent" devices?

clabretro

Not sure about those converter units. The repeaters I mentioned would've been internal to the Bell system and along the T1 lines every so often to keep the signal strong.

Eric

Catching up on my clabretro backlog and just got to this one. It's really delightful to see your excitement for this stuff and I've definitely seen junior network engineers who don't have the same level of curiosity in learning the hows and whys. Re: your comment about your old router configs being a murder mystery except you were the murderer: Don't Worry®! this happens all the time in production networks... Not like it's a substitute for good documentation but it is definitely not helping that Cisco IOS syntax doesn't permit arbitrary annotation and only a handful of things support descriptions. I've been part of a fair number of production incident reviews involving the dead -hand revenge of config snippets that nobody still working on the network still understands.