Homelab Broadband

Getting a homelab broadband cable internet setup going on a Cisco uBR7114. We'll get two early 2000s cable modems working over a single coax cable; an RCA DCM245 and a Linksys BEFCMU10. We'll learn how DOCSIS 1.0/1.1 works along the way.

Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio

#homelab #networking #retrotech #linksys

Rack stuff

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00:00 Intro
00:37 Homelab Broadband ISP Plan
01:36 Cisco uBR7114 Overview
03:11 Port Adapters
04:47 Inside the uBR7114
06:15 DOCSIS Introduction
07:07 Cable Modems
09:06 How DOCSIS Works
11:34 Physical Coax Setup
14:42 Router IOS Setup
18:18 Connecting the RCA Modem
19:47 Troubleshooting Other Modems
24:54 Speed Tests
28:10 Outro

[TenForceFalls]

Now you need to get digital cable TV on the same coax line

[dinon]

You keep saying you’re not an engineer. As a Sr. Network Engineer, I’d hire you. Your curiosity and commitment to diving deep into these devices capabilities is what it’s all about! Great stuff, please keep it up! ❤

[Baulder]

This channel is gold. I love watching how you stumble your way through all this stuff and explain it in a very understandable way. Its awesome.

[juxxtapoz]

I remember one of the biggest selling points with moving from dial-up to broadband internet was the ability to use the house phone at the same time as browsing the internet. My how the times have changed. 😆

[nickstubbings]

Why. Why now? Its 4AM here in the Uk and i've literally just finished watching your old "Stackable '90s Intel Network Gear" video and now i absolutely must go to bed...

[marcusbutler]

“To be completely honest with you, I just copy and pasted the important looking parts of that sample config and it kinda just worked”

Are you certain you’re not a network engineer??

Love waking up to these videos btw. Watched every second of it 🎉

[TrolleyMC]

dude I cannot tell you how many flashbacks I had seeing that Linksys modem. I was born too late for dial up but not too late for broadband and let me tell you, you have not lived as a kid until you played Toontown Online on a broadband connection. Great video clab.

[nohandleleft]

Just a correction if I may sir, up or down conversion is related to a change in the frequency of a signal, not the power level. It'll help to think of this modem as a tiny little radio station in a box, it can transmit on one or more frequencies, and it can also listen to one or more different frequencies all at the same time. Building a device that can work at frequencies above a hundred MHz or so starts to rapidly increase in cost, so a convenient way to reduce that is to make these devices work on an intermediate frequency (IF) instead - this is far lower than the signal going out to peoples homes, just a few MHz usually. The upconverter will take this IF and convert it to a much higher frequency - commonly this will be RF (radio frequency). In the late 90s it became increasingly common for up/down converters to have an amplification block included as well, but for radar, tv, or radio stations it's usually cheaper to do that separately with a giant box full of transistors, maybe a Klystron, or some kind of cavity resonator.

Keep making videos! :-) Your channel is interesting AF.

[chaseohara]

My RCA was a classic Motorola Surfboard... Man that thing was a tank, we had it for years and it never blinked!

[AtreidaeChibiko]

Ex Satelite engineer here, very similar stuff to Docsis.

The intermediate frequency isn't actually "lower power" its at a lower frequency. This them gets modulated with the carrier frequency in the upconverter to be the RF signal.
Thats why the attenuator is required instead of just plugging into to the DS/US ports.

[VMFRD]

I'm very glad to see you didn't forget my request! Cable internet is my favorite "kinda obsolete" technology!

[_mki]

RTCW, CS, MoH... all my favorite games growing up. :) Thanks for featuring my AIM project a couple videos back!

[guffermeister]

Check your power levels that your modems are seeing. Even with 40db of attenuation you may still find its too little, or too much. Don't assume upstream and downstream are the same. Some modems are much more sensitive to it that others. Also for the Arris, some modems, and can't be certain may want other DHCP options sending in the TFTP requests. Some ISP's use their own firmware with certificates or keys to permit devices on to their networks, which must be present for the uBR to fully provision the modem.

[craigmurray]

This is fascinating to watch, since we don't have co-ax cable TV/internet here in South Africa. As a country we went from mostly dial up to ADSL and then fibre. Along the way some people had ISDN, some leased lines and some still use long range Wi-Fi or fixed LTE/5G cellular, but fibre has exploded here.

[alphapapacharlie]

I got excited when I saw that uBR900 come out. I had a job in the early 2000s installing those in retail stores in malls. The malls had a Cisco uBR headend with a cable plant strung throughout the mall. The stores got credit card processing and VoIP to their other stores over the connection. 20 something me was pretty amazed by it all.

[callmebigpapa]

You are one of the all time greats of e-waste computing, I salute you.

[InconsistentManner]

10 megabit down 1 megabit up in 2003 was My first cable broadband service using a Scientific Atlanta DOCSIS 1.1 modem. Upgraded from 1 megabit down 128 kilobit up using aDSL broadband modem. Fiber would be great, but My ISP subscribes to the use old and ancient COAX cables. So 1 gigabit download is the fastest I can currently get with DOCSIS 3.1. It is crazy to see this work. It was kind of a magic box technology until I went to school for network administration in 2008.

[WagTsX]

Cool, you got dial-up, DOCSIS. Next step: DSL connection. In my country, DSL was way more widespread than DOCSIS, so it's something that always get my attention and interest. It got so many iterations, G.DMT, ADSL2+, VDSL and than finally die to XPON.

[bw]

I had to admin a cable modem setup for a large retirement community, so this brings back some memories. You missed a lot of "fun" with that pre built config. Lol. In the real world you also have to coexist with all the TV channels etc. (Amps were good only to about 500MHz for downstream) and upstream bandwidth runs out in a hurry and all the sudden no new modems can get online. It says cisco but I think most of the guts are Scientific Atlanta. Thanks for the video!

[Thepin]

I love old Cisco gear you should definitely do a tour of your collection of routers and love the videos