The landlord for our office has a small Talkswitch system in their office and they asked me if I had any ideas to address an issue that they're having. They have a Fortinet/Talkswitch CT.TS001.1 and are using a Netgear POE switch with FON350i sets, and four POTS lines.

Sporadically, they go to make an outgoing call and it never goes through. After a few seconds, the line just drops off. My first thought was that the first digit is being sent before the CO line is ready to receive digits, but the lines are fake ones (FiOS), so I doubt that's the issue. Besides, they never hear anything. Just silence until the line releases. I'd still like to see them insert a pause in front of the dialed digits just in case, if that's even possible.

The customer has used the system's internal resources to 'optimize the lines', but that doesn't seem to affect anything. He will reboot the unit and it seems to do OK for a few days. He has also upgraded the firmware. I don't see them having an issue with bandwidth since they are a relatively small operation. I don't think that the POE switch ports have anything to do with this since all of their other devices on it work fine.

Can anyone offer any suggestions that I might be able to present so that I don't look like a complete imbecile? I told him that I don't know their system, but the truth is, I don't have a clue where to begin with that thing.

Ed Vaughn, MBSWWYPBX