It is 2024 and we have Sonic Fiber, Starlink, and Verizon UWB here… but we need to go retro. Retro is painful. Retro Internet leaves no room for romanticizing the good old times of dial-up internet. That was miserable.
I am using the Grandstream ATA VoIP box Sonic.net gave me and the USB modem mentioned below. What made this work over VoIP is AT+IPR=2400!!
- BBS / dial-up systems:
- https://2600.network/ supports dial-in
- klud.ge is another great BBS to dial into
- https://sdf.org/
- https://sonic.net/ still has dial-up numbers
- I use this modem: StarTech.com USB 2.0 Fax Modem - 56K External Hardware Dial Up V.92 Modem/ Dongle/Adapter - Computer/Laptop Fax Modem - USB to Telephone Jack - USB Data Modem - Network Fax/CMR/POS (USB56KEMH2),Black
Here are my modem scripts:
~/wvdial_autoconnect.sh
#!/bin/bash
# Check for root privileges and restart with sudo if necessary
if [ "$(id -u)" -ne 0 ]; then
echo "Attempting to restart script with root privileges..."
exec sudo "$0" "$@"
exit $?
fi
while true; do
# Attempt to connect
wvdial
# Wait for a few seconds after disconnection before attempting to reconnect
sleep 10
done
/etc/wvdial.conf
[Dialer Defaults]
Init1 = ATZ
Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
;;Init3 = AT+IPR=2400
Init3 = AT+IPR=9600
Modem Type = USB Modem
Baud = 460800
New PPPD = yes
Modem = /dev/ttyACM0
ISDN = 0
Phone = 1650xxxyyyy
Password = "your dialup password"
Username = your_dialup_username
Lets create an account on https://noip.com/ and update it often with the IP address of the ppp0 adapter.
./update-noip.sh
#!/bin/bash
set -aueo pipefail
while true; do
# no-ip account details
USER="your-email-address-login-for-no-ip.org@gmail.com"
PASSWORD="your-no-ip.org-password"
HOST="your-host.ddns.net"
IP=$(ip addr show ppp0 | grep 'inet ' | awk '{print $2}' | cut -d/ -f1)
URL="http://dynupdate.no-ip.com/nic/update?hostname=${HOST}&myip=${IP}"
curl --user $USER:$PASSWORD $URL
if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
echo "DNS record for ${HOST} updated to ${IP}"
else
echo "Failed to update DNS record for ${HOST} to ${IP}"
fi
sleep 60
done
I actually run a dial-up server once in a while here: http://asr033.ddns.net/ (It is always interesting to see what creatures connect to this extremely slow and unreliable machine.)