atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Wiring - Telecom Carriers - Trunks & Services Outside Plant OSP Construction Other lines on customer DMARC

Don't know if this is the correct place to post this but here goes.

Is it out of the norm to have dial tone of other customers at another customers inside DMARC. And the DMARC was extended by the service providor.

I have saw this time and time again. Where a customer will have many numbers that don't belong to them in there wiring closet. And not customers that are in a high rise or close to other people.

Looks like there would be privacy and fraud issues here.

No, not at all. I have buildings with multiple offices and specify that they fill one RJ-21X up first then install another. The only thing I require is that the numbers be grouped together and labeled. Sometimes I have to take care of this myself.

This saves me time and material because I install a 25 pair secondary protector fed with 25 pair cable from the Amphenol on the 21X. From there a 25 pair cable goes to a 66 block where the lines are cross connected to the risers or drops.

Sometimes we even have multiple tenants on the same KSU.

It's all one big cross connect anyway. The LEC terminal is often right next to our equipment. There you can find pairs from all over town, not just for that building.

We are not supposed to be in there but sometimes it'd necessary, and sometimes the terminal will be the DEMARC. This is where professionalism comes in. Do your job correctly and the LEC won't complain or even know you were there.

-Hal

Mr. VP:

Around here, it happens all the time, especially with RJ21's. FCC mandates that the customer's lines be terminated on a registered jack. The customer should be able to "plug" their 25 pair cable into the "jack" on the side of the RJ21X and have their lines (and only their lines) going to their equipment. Nobody ever followed that rule, they just pulled the clips and ran jumpers right from the block. The red plastic dust cover never came off of the "jack".

We don't really see many true RJ21's around here anymore. Usually, it's just a 66M1-50 with an orange cover. There's no way to plug in the cable as mandated by the FCC for an RJ21X. I think it's just become an unwritten rule that an orange cover on a block is an RJ21.

Here in the DC area, there are very congested closets, especially in the basement terminal rooms. Since the telco won't go beyond there anymore, that means LOTS of RJ21's in an area that wasn't sized for so many blocks when the building was designed.

Sometimes, it's just a lazy telco installer who didn't feel like going back out to the truck. Other times, it is a case where another customer has an RJ21 with five lines. While I agree that it is wrong to do so, I've seen them add a few lines to the block for a different customer because they know that the five lines are probably all that will ever be wired to the jack otherwise. The installers usually work the same areas and know the size of their previously-insalled customers to a certain extent.

New construction here usually includes real NID's with separate RJ11's for everything, regardless of the circuit type. That way, the line is formally drawn in the sand and there isn't a gray area for them to worry about.

As for the privacy question, I think that it's safe to assume that anyone with a butt set would tap onto others' lines regardless of who's jack it is.

This is just plain laziness on the part of the carrier. They are re-using cable pairs that once went to another location (yours), without going to that location and taking the termination off that use to be used at that location. This won't get corrected unless there is a trouble and they have to remove it...dang wire clipping anyway. :rolleyes:

Around here you don't see many real RJ-21X's with the 25 pair Amphenol anymore either. We like to use Krones which have the disconnect contacts. (I know these sometimes cause problems but in all the years I've seen them I can only think of maybe two instances.) I have the test adapter that splits the block in my tool pouch and it makes it real easy to determine on what side of the DEMARC the problem is just by plugging it in.

I guess you can say that this fulfills the RJ-21X requirement and apparently the LEC does too. I once got into a Sharpie pissing match with the LEC techs once. They labeled the orange cover on one of these Amphenol-less Krone blocks "RJ-21X" I wrote "is not a" above their writing. Next time I was out there my "is not a" is crossed out. This went on for years and I don't know who won. Probably when there was no more room on the cover.

-Hal

This is just plain laziness on the part of the carrier. They are re-using cable pairs that once went to another location (yours), without going to that location and taking the termination off that use to be used at that location. This won't get corrected unless there is a trouble and they have to remove it...dang wire clipping anyway.

Yeah, I'm usually pretty good with that. If I see a tenant has moved and the clips on the Krone or DEMARC are still cross connected I remove the cross connects even back to the terminal if it's in the room. Not unusual after awhile to find a working pair from down the street on it otherwise.

-Hal

But the ones I am talking about are customers that are not in locations where anyone else have ever shared incoming facilities with anyone.

Very remote customers in the middle of nowhere.

A new customer that the other nearest dial tone may be 1/2 mile away. :confused:

I had several customers all in a large industrial park complain about static everytime it rained. After a long battle Verizon found a DMARC at a closed business that had a roof leak over it. The whole industrial park ran through there.

Mike: It's not unual for cable count to multiple or over lap at many locations. A simple example would be the first complex from a CO might work out of a terminal that has a 900pr count to feed it (doesn't mean all 900 pr go into the building) and an office a couple miles away in the same cable count may have a terminal feed that has a count that falls with in the 900 count of the terminal on the first building so some phone tech takes a pair to run into the first terminal to fix a trouble that was really the count intended for the terminal miles away. Hope I made a little sense there.

But the ones I am talking about are customers that are not in locations where anyone else have ever shared incoming facilities with anyone.

Ah, OK. If you are indeed talking about a demarc on the customer's premises and not a terminal then somebody has dropped the ball and not disconnected the unused pairs on the drop cable at the terminal end.

As Justbill points out it is standard procedure for counts to overlap at different terminals which would mean that the same pair would be present at multiple terminals.

Only one terminal will serve the customer the pair was intended for. That pair would also be working at any other terminal where it was present and nothing should be connected to those binding posts.

If a drop was left connected to one of these working pairs obviously then you are going to have that line on the demarc.

So to answer your question now that I think I understand it, no there should not be any lines on the customer's demarc other than their own.

-Hal