atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Comdial Telephones & Systems DXP Dropping Calls

Hey everyone, thanks for reading my post, I hope someone can lead me in the right direction on how to handle this problem we've been having recently. I searched the forum but didn't see anything that matched our little problem. I'm a Property Manager for a company that has a call center, last week our Comdial DXP system started to randomly drop calls in the afternoon, when it gets busy. The problem is intermittent, but always in the afternoon when call volume picks up.

A couple of the sales people called me on my cell phone yesterday when it started to occur again and I happened to be nearby the cabinet, one of the DXPCO-LP8 boards was blinking three rapid blinks. The rest of the boards in the box were doing their normal thing, whether it was the single blink every few seconds or the solid light that showed it was in use.

Do you think that specific line board is going bad or could there be something else going on as well that should be looked at?

Any help or opinions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks Again,
Scott Groff

im new to this phone system but do you have more than one DXPCO-LP8 boards? is it only dropping calls on that particular board?

Good question from comguy. If you have more than one LP8 card, it might be worth swapping them to see if the trouble follows the card. It could also be a bad Services card.

I must caution you though, the boards are not hot swappable without following proper procedure. If you're not comfortable that you'd be able to dig yourself out of a hole if something goes wrong, I would suggest walking away and calling a certified Comdial technician to take a look at it for you. If your business depends on the phones, as it sounds like it does, it will be money well spent and may just save you time, headache, and possibly even your job.

Justin

Thanks for the responses and input guys.

I did swap out the board with one I had in an extra cabinet from a system I bought a little while back for parts. That didn't solve the occasional dropped calls or the funny blink I'm getting.

I pulled the SMDR reports to cross reference the call examples that I asked the sales staff to send me when a dropped call occurred. What I found out was that these were all outbound calls on lines 33 through 56, so they aren't resident to just one board. In checking those lines I've found out that they are all in two hunt groups, which made me think it may have been a problem with those local lines. I didn't have any noise on the lines themselves when we checked that, however.

I spent some time just staring at the cabinet and the expansion cabinet to watch the system do its thing. After a bit, I noticed that the T-1 card was showing a bipolar violation, which isn't good from what I've read, so I called the telco to have them do a loop test through our card and back to the CO to see if anything could be found. They couldn't get a return on the loop and they came out last week to see what the issue was. They spent the whole day here and said they had to rebuild the circuit for the T-1. I haven't had any reports of dropped calls since then but I still do have that odd blinking light on the LP8 board.

I was thinking of swapping two of the LP8 cards in the box, Universal 3 and 4, to see if the blinking light thing follows the board or if it stays resident to the port in the cabinet. Any thoughts? Could that possibly screw anything up in hunting down or wouldn't that be an issue? I don't want to incidentally take out 16 lines because I relocated the cards.

What is your outbound on, T1 or loop start? I didn't see mention of the T1 in your original post.

Justin

Justin,

I'm not quite sure about that, I was left under the impression that all outbound from the sales area were on loop start. I didn't think to even consider the T-1 when the problem started.

I was told the T-1 was only used for a couple of inbound lines for a different 800 number and a local line to voice mail, it isn't supposed to have anything to do with the sales department inbound or outbound. I'm guessing that's not the case and I'll have to look into it a little further and see if one any of the hunt groups are set up to forward to the T-1.

I do know that the blinking card in question was added after the original system was installed. I'll do a little more nosing around and see what I find out about that T-1 and how it's set up.

Thanks again for the input and ideas.

this is just an observation that i had on my own system.

if i try getting a line that does not have any physical phone line connected the lp board will flash 3 lights. and after about 30 sec it drops the line and returns to its single light pattern.

is this the blinking pattern that you are getting?