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Two Port T1/E1 Voice/WAN Interface Card

02/16/2012 By Andrew Roderos Leave a Comment

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I like using VWIC-2MFT-T1 card since it gives me the ability to save WIC slots on smaller routers, like Cisco 1841. If you’re also in a budget, it is quite useful to combine voice and data T1 with this card. Though, you may want to separate them so it won’t be a single point of failure.

The first time I’ve installed this on a 2821 router, I didn’t see any serial interfaces at all in the show ip int br output, as shown below. Second thing I checked was, if the card was being recognized using show diag and show ver, as shown below.

Router#show ip int br
Interface                  IP-Address      OK? Method Status                Protocol
GigabitEthernet0/0         unassigned      YES unset  administratively down down
GigabitEthernet0/1         unassigned      YES unset  administratively down down
Router#show ver | i T1
2 Channelized (E1 or T1)/PRI ports
Router#show diag | i VWIC
        VWIC2-2MFT-T1/E1 - 2-Port RJ-48 Multiflex Trunk - T1/E1
        Product (FRU) Number     : VWIC2-2MFT-T1/E1

Looking at the output, the card was being recognized so I asked myself why was not seeing the serial interfaces. Upon reading Cisco’s documentation, I discovered that I needed to issue commands to enable them and show up as serial interfaces. Though, this may vary router/IOS to router/IOS. When I installed it on a Cisco 1841, I didn’t have to use card type command. In this particular scenario, I am using a Cisco 2901 router with IOS version 15. Normally, you can determine this by doing a show run to see if card type command is needed, as shown below.

Router#sh run
Building configuration...
Current configuration : 880 bytes
!
! No configuration change since last restart
!
version 15.0
service timestamps debug datetime msec
service timestamps log datetime msec
no service password-encryption
!
hostname Router
!
boot-start-marker
boot-end-marker
!
! card type command needed for slot/vwic-slot 0/0
! card type command needed for slot/vwic-slot 0/1
! card type command needed for slot/vwic-slot 0/2
!
no aaa new-model
! Output omitted for brevity

As you can see from above, there’s a message that you need to issue the card type command. The commands you need to enable the VWIC-2MFT-T1 or VWIC2-2MFT-T1 are shown below.

Router(config)#card type t1 0 0
Router(config)#controller t1 0/0/0:0
Router(config-controller)#framing esf
Router(config-controller)#linecode b8zs
Router(config-controller)#channel-group 1 timeslots 1-24
Router(config-controller)#
Feb 17 01:07:29.255: %LINK-3-UPDOWN: Interface Serial0/0/0:1, changed state to down
Feb 17 01:07:30.255: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface Serial0/0/0:1, changed state to down
Router(config-controller)#controller t1 0/0/0:1
Router(config-controller)#channel-group 1 timeslots 1-24
Router(config-controller)#
Feb 17 01:08:01.031: %LINK-3-UPDOWN: Interface Serial0/0/1:1, changed state to down
Feb 17 01:08:02.031: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface Serial0/0/1:1, changed state to down
Router(config-controller)#do sh ip int br
Interface                  IP-Address      OK? Method Status                Protocol
GigabitEthernet0/0         unassigned      YES unset  administratively down down
GigabitEthernet0/1         unassigned      YES unset  administratively down down
Serial0/0/0:1              unassigned      YES unset  down                  down
Serial0/0/1:1              unassigned      YES unset  down                  down

Again, this may not be a good idea if you’re concern about single point of failure. However, I find these cards pretty reliable and I have not seen them fail. They’re best if you’re concern with WIC/VWIC slot density, especially when you start using more than two bonded T1s.

I hope this has been helpful and thank you for reading!

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Filed Under: General Tagged With: Cisco, IOS, Router

About Andrew Roderos

I am a network security engineer with a passion for networking and security. Follow me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

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