atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Wiring - Telecom Carriers - Trunks & Services Telecom Service & Providers (1200 baud) Analog Modems Not Communicating

I think all he is going to do is piss off the engineer. The engineer is probably just being nice about it because his people skills are better than mine.

-Hal

Bryan,

Your read on the situation is correct. The Telco is not trying to hide from me or what I once encountered (in Georgia) of "we are giving what the tariff says . . . so shove it".

On the contrary, they are stumped as am I. In our prior location, we had copper for the 3 miles from the CO and a switch (5ESS?) that could be provisioned as "Voice" or "Fax Modem" on individual POTS lines. Indeed, they told me that they could tweak it further, but we made it work with the "Fax Modem" setting. Our modems were indeed "dual" modems, but we use them because they can be forced to "quick connect" at 1200 baud with no handshaking. MultiTech has told us that they can't sell us any better modems than these antiques in our rack. If you go to their website, the exact same modems are featured for our applications.

The Telco claims there is no way they can give us copper, that the fiber runs about 20 miles down the road from the CO to us, via a "RT" about .25 miles away. The conversion there is made, they claim, with some model (2000?, they won't tell me) of Litespan (division of Alcatel/Lucent) DLC.

I have found general documentation, not detailed enough, online that documents the POTS provisioning in the admin software for the Litespan units, but not detailed enough to be able to point to them to say, "insert this tab into this slot".

They have been very helpful and patient. It is just that ours is a real outlier to their normal problems and they don't know how to deal with it, it is certainly not that they won't deal with it.

No one feels threatened by us telling them what to do or how to do their job. They are stumped, we are stumped, but we know our configuration works on other phone lines about 90 miles up I-95. They would love for us, through you, to find a fix so that I will get out of their hair.

I am hoping there is someone here who, given these variables, can tell us what to do, or tell us who can tell us what to do.


All best,

Jay

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: Noooo! That couldn't be it Hal. You're just the sweetest thing eeeeever!


Jay, yesterday I was digging through my BOOKS seeing if I had any detailed reference material, since my memory was serving me just enough to say, “yeah I remember something like that happening.” ... TODAY :shhh: One being from Alcatel on Litespan-2000 & 2012. I’ll post back tomorrow if I find anything.

Wow, this is like the night before Christmas! I am going to put on my jammies right now so it will happen faster.

Seriously, I really appreciate the effort.

All best,

Jay

If taking an inbound call on one of the affected lines… Does called id info show up between the first and second ring like expected? I doubt you’ll have a caller id device on the lines as configured now but can this be tested?

… And do you think if you asked the at&t Network Engineer what type of card COT and RT cards? There are even more possible configurations than I knew of.

LightSpan Might be a long shot...Had a customer once that was complaining they couldn't receive faxes and were served off of LightSpan, they were also the only customer with this trouble. Did the normal tests for leakage and noise and all was fine. After a few trips out to their location we checked to see what the ring voltage was. The first ring was the normal 90Vac but then it dropped to like 50 Vac, and just kept getting lower and lower until the fax modem wouldn't even recognize that there was a call coming in. I can't remember if it was a bad power board or ring generator but you could easily put a Volt/Ohm meter across tip and ring at the d-mark and see if you are getting a constant 90Vac.

Interesting that you mention that!

We were told by both MultiTech (modem maker) and ITC (Independent Technologies - loop current attenuator maker) that the sweet spot for our modems was 23-27 milliamps. The line defaults to 24.6 (if you can trust my antique Fluke and the Telco's fancy meter) but the line appears a bit "hot" at 52 volts (DC). I understand that 48 volts is what is normal or the "tariff".

We have set the attenuators at 23.4 milliamps, we seem to get the least number of garbage transactions at that setting. However, at least 20-30% of our extremely short (~200 byte) transactions are trash and, as shown in our system logs and the client's receipts.

I will ask them to double check that. BTW, can I call LiteSpan directly? I assume they don't want to hear from an end-user, just the LEC.

Thanks again for the tip.

I think you will have to live with the 52 volts dc. It's pretty much the norm for LightSpan and I am not aware of any way to adjust them. After re-reading my last sentence in my post above, I should say that what you need to check for is that you are getting 90vac of ringing voltage when a call is inbound, there shouldn't always be 90Vac on the line. As for calling Alcatel-Lucent...I wouldn't recommend it. Not sure how AT&T does it but you could ask the engineer about getting a tech out that is responsible for the upkeep of their electronics and maybe the tech could call into tech support. Besides swapping boards there isn't much you can do with LightSpan unless you are logged into the system.

Old Flukes... Them’s the best kind.

52 vDC ... Ahhh ha! RPOTS and you’re right up against the remote (RT) ain’t ya? :thumb:

You can TRY and call Alcatel/Lucent but I wouldn’t expect it would be too well received.


After as little light reading and some time to try and ‘member this LightSpan crap.

If this lil’ conundrum was on my desk... The first thing I’d try is moving your lines off the (C/R) POTS card and putting them to (C/R) UVG cards. I’d leave all setting to default and/or auto-detect to start with except one. ... I’d ask you Jay, if you need caller info at all... Based off that answer, the only default setting I’d change would be the OHX parameter to NONE (if not needed at all) or to CTRD (if CID is needed.)