We have a customer with an ESI 600 with 2 PRI's. This system has been in a little over 3 years and the problem has happened about 6 or 8 times. There is a delay when answering. They complain that they answer and no one is there or it takes 5 seconds or so before they can hear one another. I have witnessed this problem. The quick fix is to disconnect the PRI from the ESI then hook it back up. We have also changed out the PRI card and of course it is fixed once the card comes back online. Does anyone have any ideas about this one?

No errors in Alarm History or PRI Diagnostics reports?

If it's happening 6-8 times over three years is it mostly recently or spread out like once every four months which would be brutal to diagnose?

If it happens more frequently, like once a day, ESI can turn on PRI debug which would show what the telco and the 600 are doing at the start of a call. The problem is that can eat-up debug space quickly.

You probably have also checked that the telco has both circuits provisioned for NI-2, with FAS. You would probably have worse problems if either of those weren't the case.

After re-reading your post, it sounds like once it starts happening, it keeps happening until disconnecting and reconnecting the PRI. While it's happening is the time to contact ESI and have them initiate PRI debug. That should reveal any signaling issues with clean, properly provisioned PRIs.

What Software are You running on the 600, ESI has come out with newer software that continuously looks for the D channel

The software has not been upgraded since the install in 2007. We have tried twice to upgrade the software but to no avail (for whatever reason); ESI has can't give me a reason why the software will not upload successfully. I actually have my Master Tech cert. but it does no good on this system because of the age of the software. I guess it would be a good idea to have ESI get into it..again. I have had them check it out before and they want to point to the circuit service provider...which is us. I am confident our circuit is clean. Since we have two PRIs in this system I can just flip them and of course the problem goes away b/c of the disconnect but then it returns at some point. Which tells me the problem stays with the DLC, but I have also (on seperate occasions) flipped the DLC cards and also replaced them and the problem eventually returns. The problem stays with incoming calls on the first DLC's card slot. Is there any way that this could possibly be related to a hard drive problem? We have only been doing ESI's for about 3 1/2 yrs and I have heard that the hard drives in ESI's can tend to die or start giving problems when they become 3-5 yrs old, which has already happened to us on one 600 we installed about 1 1/2 yrs ago. Thanks.

I've never seen hard drive issues cause problems with a PRI. The fact that you've swapped DLC Cards rules them out.

I had one customer who had problem after problem and the telco kept saying they were clean. When the customer switched to a different provider for their PRI all of the problems disappeared.

Can you request the ILEC to swap the pairs that the T is delivered on? .... you may find that solves your problem.

You could try putting an Adtran on the problem PRI, we have a few sites that were constantly dropping and locking up, we put the adtran , and haven't heard from them since.

Also, You say you are Master Tech, Look at Known Issues, there is one little blurb about PRI locking up( it really doesn't make any sense though.

upstateny-We are the ILEC; we have tried this. Plus we flip the the T's and the problem will still occur at some point. We should have no problems with cable pairs (but nothing is 100%). In this government building we have at least 35 different circuits, an E911 center and many pots lines which are all clean.

nonameyet-It is difficult to find anyone with ESI who has any knowledge at all about PRI's; but I suppose that is not their job. I will probably give the Adtran a go since just about everything has been changed out already.

Side question: Have either of you, or anyone else for that matter, had problems like I mentioned above dealing with software not loading?

Thanks for your responses.

NO problems like that here , seems like I remember there being something on the ESI webknowledge base about how to setup a system with 2 PRI's, may want to check that out.

I have only seen very rare occasions when the software would not load.

That would be my first step going forward in case there was some revision to the PRI protocol in the newer software.

I think if it was an issue with having 2 PRI's and not being set up properly you would see the the issues on a more regular basis.

When i had my customer years ago that had repeated issues i escalated it with ESI and they definitely do have people who are well versed with PRI's .. you may want to address it with your sales rep and insist they escalate it.

The adtran is a good idea .... in my experience when there is a problem with the circuit it often takes a reset to clear things.. and you would most likely not have any issues with the link between the KSU and the Adtran ... the Adtran may be more forgiving of circuit issues or at least clear them and move on.

as far as loading Newer software into the 600, You say it was installed in 2007, what is the current software? when the 600 first came out, we used esi-access to program it, Then, ESI came out with the CS, and system Programmer, I had one customer on the older 600, we were able to load the newer software ( BUT ) there is a Certain procedure You will need to follow ( it is available on esi-web site) as I remember there were also a Ton of Prompts that needed to be loaded as well, AND, If I really Remember I'm thinking it might have Reinitialized the system as well...

Yes I am sure the PRI's are set up properly. This ran without issue for the first year or so and nothing has changed with the setup.

upstateny- I did not intend to knock ESI about their knowledge with PRI's; I have been really pleased with their tech support in general. I think it is great to actually speak to the people who put their name on the equipment. I just remember in the Master Tech class that the instructor (who should at least be their lead tech support tech) was not well versed in PRI's and that has also been my experience with their tech support--when it comes to troubleshooting that is. I am sure they have a couple of guys who know their stuff, but like you said it definitley has to be escalated in order to get it to those guys.

nonameyet- We got this right after they released the CS line. We program with ESI System Programmer. So a software upgrade should be like all CS, but with the software being 3 plus years old the prompts will definitley have to be restored.

Thank you all for your responses.