Hi, here's a good one:

Someone who was working behind our rack mounted Axxess cabinets evidently bumped something because after he's done our second cabinet (connected by a wide flat ribbon cable) shows all cards with red halted light. Nothing obvious seems physically wrong. Reseat of cards / reboot of PBX did not help. Any thoughts on that?

The second cabinet was used only for our single PRI and 32 of our 50-ish IP phones. We have a 1024 system with a CPS.

The workaround is that I installed a spare T1 card into the first cabinet and connected the PRI to that. In DB Studio I moved the 32 affected IP sets to an previously installed but unused IPRC card in the first cabinet. I made sure both of these cards have the same settings as the original cards except that the IPRC card already had an IP address and gateway as we previously had been using it.

I corrected the trunk groups and ARS and confirmed that on the IPRC all 32 voice resources are set to IP Endpoints.

Finally we programmed the affected IP sets with the new IPRC gateway IP address.

In and outbound calling are generally fine. The first cabinet is now nearly full, now having a T-1 card, 2 IPRC, DKSC, SLC16, OPC and the CPC card.

It's a 1024 port system with a CPS server and over 140 IP endpoint licenses. Timeslots also don't seem to be an issue according to DB Studio information.

Our problem is that occasionally we now experience only 1 way audio on IP sets. Whether internal or external it is the call initator who cannot be heard. The call receiver can be heard. Again this is for both outbound and inbound and IP to IP calls. If you make the call, the receiver can't hear you. Occasionally. Not 100% of all calls to any IP set. You can repeat the call and it works fine or the receiver can call you back and now as the initiator, he can't be heard.

There is a firewall between the PBX and the IP sets but firewall permissions are managed by groups of IP addresses and both the IP of the original card and IP of the new card are listed in the same group therefore the firewall policies work the same for both of them. Previously this IPRC card with it's IP address was working fine with IP end points.

Thoughts?

you could have a backplane issue. I have seen this before in the past on Axxess cabinets. What can happen is that the cabinet itself gets warped and can cause the cards to not properly seat in their slots and cause the type of issues that you are describing. Unfortunately there isnt a good way to verify this is the case without changing out the cabinet with a new one.The fact that your second cabinet flamed out completely after someone was working behind the cabinets points to the ribbon cable but again that cable plugs into the backplane.

I also had a 3rd cabinet with a fiber connection. Can I use that as my 2nd cabinet or does the 2nd cabinet have to use the ribbon cable connector?

the cabinets are the same however the connection from cab 1 to cab 2 must be via the ribbon cable. If you swap the cabinets, you must move the terminator in the cabinet. This is a small yellow unit that plugs into the backplane. Make sure your new cab 2 looks just like your old cab 2 and vice versa. If you dont move the terminator cab 2 wont come online.