56k Seattle/Everett

[Robert Dinse <nanook@eskimo.com>]

     56K / ISDN  Seattle/Everett Problems - Not Resolved

     The problems with the 56k service are not resolved, but it is still
being pursued.  We provide 56k service through a port wholesaler, they
have switched the Seattle POP to a different vendors equipment and it has 
been problematic thus far. 

     There is an engineer on site, earlier tonight they thought they had
telco problems, but the person I last talked to confirmed there is a
problem with their new equipment. 

     A pattern has emerged that, when the box gets fairly loaded, people
start to get cut-offs, ring-no-answer, re-order (fast busy), etc.  Now a
fairly bizzare aspect of this behavior is that after they reboot the box,
it seems to actually be able to take a higher number of calls than it had
on it prior to the reboot. 

     There are some good reasons that they wanted to go with this
equipment though I would have much rather seen it put into a new POP where
the load would gradually increase and load issues could be addressed as
they occurred rather than putting it into an already busy POP and having
it disrupt existing service before bugs are worked out. 

     There are several reasons, one is that this box will provide them the
capability to provide DSL services, which in turn will provide us with
that capability.  There pricing for the low end services though is not
very attractive and so I am pursuing some other options but they aren't
mutually exclusive options so what I anticipate doing is using whichever
provides the most cost effective solution for a particular situation. 

     Another reason for going this route is that Portmaster 4's have not
worked well for them.  Previously they used Portmaster 3's, those worked
well, but only support a couple of PRI's so you need a bunch of them.  The
Portmaster 4's are a much higher density box but they were finding that
they flaked out when they were fully equipped and loaded.  This box they
put in Seattle is the first of it's kind that they've turned up but it has
been used elsewhere and by carriers that have loaded them up fully, and
put much higher call volumes than the Seattle POP represents.  So this box
should be able to handle the load.

     They are pursuing a couple of possibilities, one involves defective
equipment that doesn't cause a problem until the call volume gets high
enough to start to utilize that piece of equipment and then once it does,
the entire box is hosed until they reboot.  Another issue is that there
still appears to be some firmware problems and they are working with the
vendor to resolve that.  There may be some downtime tonight in order to
load new code into the box to attempt to address firmware problems. 

     In order to make sure that progress continues, I need to continue to
hear from you if you encounter any problems.  Because there may be some
telco problems involved, it is important in the trouble report that you
include your originating telephone number, the number you dialed, the
nature of the trouble, and the time the trouble occured.  Please avoid the
real generic "the service doesn't work" reports because it doesn't give
any information to actually resolve the problem.

     Again, we need to know the time the problem occured, the nature of
the problem, and the originating number, and the number dialed.

     With cutoffs it's also helpful to know the operating system, the
modem manufacturer and model, and when it occurs, immediately after
authentication, when idle, during the middle of the transfer, etc.  There
are known problems with some modem vendors and some operating systems for
which fixes in the form of newer firmware, or upgrades to the OS, or
configuration changes, exist. 

     Also, it's my understanding that AOL has access numbers in the same
central office.  If anybody knows of a Seattle area AOL number that has an
'812' prefix, or other access numbers in '812' that generally work, that
would be helpful in isolating any telco problems since if it's telco, they
should get stick at the same time.