sundance-communications.com/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Nortel Telephones & Systems MICS 4.0 Add new extension at specific DN

I'm a newbie; I hope I can accurately state my question and environment.

I have an MICS 4.0 with extensions ranging from 120 to 150, but a lot of numbers are skipped. For example, in the 14X range, only 140, 141, and 145 are valid DNs.

I'm planning on adding another pair of wires for a new conference phone, but I'm not sure where to punch down the pair to get a specific DN. The current conference phone is at internal number 150. I'd like the new one to be at 149 or 151 for convention's sake.

I've found extension 120 on the punch-down block, which is the receptionist's DN, but it doesn't appear that the extensions are punched down sequentially from there. For instance, I am extension 124, but I'm five or six pairs down the punch-down block. It doesn't help that the punch-down block pairs aren't labeled by DN. Perhaps that isn't unusual, but it seemed to me that a sequential arrangement would be the best organized.

I've searched this forum as well as comp.dcom.sys.nortel and read a lot in the
MICS installers manual, but I can't figure out how to tell which DN will be assigned when I punch down the cable to the new phone.

Here's a summary of my questions:

1) Is there a particular place the new pair should be punched down to have extension 149 or 151? If so, how do I find which one? Shall I look for a particular color/stripe?

2) Do I need to power down the phone system to add the new phone?

3) Once I have the pair punched down, and the new DN located in my phone system, I'm planning on just copying the current conference phone DN's properties over to the new DN. Sound right?

I've configured internal and external line properties in the past, so I'm fairly accustomed to the menu system. If only this installer's reference was more of a "how-to" type of document, I think I'd be able to handle this myself.

I enjoy learning about technical things like this, so if I've misused terminology in my post, please correct me.

Thanks for reading this, and if you have an idea, I'd be grateful to hear it.

Thanks so much!

-Sam

go into programing of the system in maintenance you will be able to see what extensions are on what port if your extension is not there you just have to activate your jack it will take the next availlable extension then you can do a change dn to whatever number you want

Dahirolla: From the wording you have in your post, I would say you might need to get someone to talk you through the basics. I would recommend you make a post requesting assistance. Someone will offer to take the issue off the board and answer your questions. You'll probably have to pay a little for the help since this board is primarily meant to help with basic end user assistance, like how to transfer calls or how to turn off message waiting lamps. There are a lot of tech to tech posts here as well but when it comes to helping an end user or a do-it-yourselfer, it can be better to get someone to help you over the phone or through PMs.

If you want to do this yourself, as sentrex1 says, take a sheet of paper and write down the numbers from 101 to 132 - those are the ports on your system not extension numbers. 101 to 124 are on the first cable, the uppermost cable on the MICS. 125 to 132 are the first 8 pairs on the middle cable of the MICS.

Take sentrex1's advice and go into progrmming and go to the maintainance category. In DNs you will see port 101 is DN XXX where XXX is the extension number so write the extension number next to the port number. Use [Next] to go through all 32 ports.

Now you have a list of ports and extensions and call each extension on the list to see if a phone is actually working on that port. Now you have a list of which ports 1 to 24 and 25 to 31 are being used. If 149 or 151 are assigned to a port, just go to that port on the statioh block and punch it down. If not, pick a port that is not being used and punch the new station down to that port.

Go back into DN programming, use [Next] to the correct port, and change the DN from whatever it is to what you want it to be. The Norstar is English driven, it shows you what to do with things like [Change].

This should take you about ten minutes or less.

dahirolla,
your phone system has been a victim of set relocation, which is a ticking time bomb. Set relocation overrides the default port to DN mapping. I've seen time and time again where something happens to your telephone system that causes it to default back to its original mapping. When this happens no one in the office will have their correct telephone.

I highly recommend you hire a trained technician to return the system mapping to its default and turn off set relocation. That way when you move or add phones you can move jumper wires and keep your telephone closet in a logical order.

I agree with telemarv, I had that same situation happen 2 weeks ago. I had to turn set relocation OFF and re-program 56 locals with DID's.

Why would you think this is set relocation?

If the extensions are in the 1xx range they would have to be changed from 2xx on purpose. They wouldn't fall from 2xx to 1xx on their own.

I think his issue is that there is no logical order in DN to port mapping. This would indicate set relocation has been extensively used.

Re 1xx vs 2xx: The DN range was probably changed when the system was first initialized. Probably to maintain a numbering scheme from a previous phone system.

Thank you all for your time and information! I'm learning more about the phone system interface and inner workings. I hadn't previously known about the port mapping to DNs, and hadn't used the change DN function.

I've been able to narrow down the port I want to use on the phone system, and tomorrow I'll be rigging the conference phone into the system before I hard wire it, so I can prove it works before I make permanent changes.

Once again, thanks so much for your time. Sorry for not responding earlier. I'll post when I have another question, or when I'm done, whichever is first.

Thank you sentrex1, Old blond hippity hopping Bunnie (I'm glad I know how to copy and paste), and others.