FW: (ASCEND) telco freezes?

[Scott McDonald <Admin@mylink.net>]

Sounds like a similiar problem:

>please help me out if I understood you wrong!
>you have 2 dedicated ISDN lines
>>from pris and grandfathered flat rate isdn lines
>what's this?

We have many clients with dedicated ISDN service.  Two of these clients are experiencing the freezes.
Some of our dedicated clients choose to pay the telco for a flat rate ISDN plan ($240/month just for telco line) and they call into us and leave the line connected all the time (paying us for dedicated so it is uninterrupted).  Some of our clients choose to pay the telco a lower rate "normal" ISDN line (about $80/month) from the telco, but these lines are metered for all outgoing calls totaling over 320hours a month, so if they were to call into us and leave the line up all the time the telco would hit them with a lot of usage charges for the time over 320 (about another 400 hours a month single channel, or 800 a month in usage charges for 128k since it uses time twice as fast).  We offer a service where we will call into the client ISDN to bring the circuit up, so that they can just get the cheaper telco line (incoming calls are not metered).  On our end to place the call to the client, we use a handfull of ISDN lines that were ordered before the telco moved to metered ISDN, !
so that we can call out on these isdn lines to the cheaper client isdn lines to bring the circuit up.  When we filled all of these grandfathered in flat rate isdn lines up, and had no more to offer clients, we installed an outgoing PRI because outgoing PRI channel calls are not metered here like basic outgoing ISDN channel calls. You can call an ISDN channel from an outgoing PRI channel.  We configure maxen to place the outgoing calls over the PRI's to the client's isdn, we don't pay metered usage and since they are receiving the call they don't pay metered usage.  We charge an extra fee for this call placement, basically undercutting the telcos extra $160 a month to a more reasonable surcharge, so the clients save money on gettinig the call placement service with us instead of flat rate ISDN line from the telco.  We get extra revenue for originating the call over what we charge for providing the 128k connection. All parties win, and the telco gets screwed a little (ABOUT TIME!
!!!).

Problem is, for two of these circuits where we call the client, we are seeing the freezes and have to repeatedly reboot the routers to get the data flowing again.  I think if we were to move them back to where they place the call and leave the line up the problem would probably disappear.  That's what I'm going to test tonight.  If it does, we will have to have these clients pay the telco more per month for the flat rate isdn line (240 > 80) and then drop the extra charge we are getting for placing the call.  So, because of a problem the telco hasn't been able to resolve the telco will get more money and we will get less for the same end result, a dedicated 128k connection between two points over ISDN.

Since we are doing the call placement over PRI's and over individual ISDN BRI lines, we have been able to place calls to the two clients from a variety of equipment (max 4004, max 4048, max1800, pipeline 130, pipeline 75, and pipeline 50) and from different lines (both pri and isdn) on our end.  The two troubled clients are still having to reboot their routers every morning.  We went out and swapped out the router at the client location twice.  Same problem, they have to reboot whenever the line freezes. The only thing on these wans that has stayed the same has been the clients ISDN lines.  We are thinking about having them install new lines, and moving over their connection to the new lines, but this will require they pay for a new telco install and sign a contract for 12 months on the line, but this is not practical just to prove to the telco that it is their problem on the line.  

That's why I'm asking for suggestions in case anyone has had some similiar problems and came up with a decent resolution (like telling the telco to adjust or check some value related to the ISDN line in the CO switch).

>and of curse the PBX guy's give me for sure the PBX is working well,
>the Ascend guys mentioned the PBX is wrong...
>If you know a patch please let me know, otherwise I have to go to
>Singapore and install a Modem on a NT server :-(

I would say pin them down.  Find that guy at Ascend who said the telco PBX is wrong.  Get his contact info and work with him and ask the telco to setup a vendor meet.  Conference call them both in and let the two argue out the technical issues amongst themselves until they have a solution or get pissed at each other and hang up on you. 

I'm waiting on Ascend to answer a support email and either tell me our problem is either something strange about their routers that is only popping up on these two circuits, or to blame it on the telco.  When Ascend blames it on the telco, and I have plenty of direct lines for the telco people who are blaming it on the ascend, I'm going to get the two together on a conference call and try to trap them into blaming each other live, watch the sparks fly, and hope a resolution comes out of it.  We've had this work before when it was the telco's fault and Ascend was able to lead them through fixing their service.  We've also waisted a lot of time trying this before when it was Ascend's fault (remebering the days of maximum 26000 connects on PRI lines to maxen, Ascend said it was the telco's pri quality, telco said it was CPE, a few max software loads later with new modem code revisions and we saw consistant 33600 instead of 26000).


Scott McDonald
Systems Engineer
MyLink, Inc.
Admin@MyLink.net

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