3300CXI II BRI lock-up

[miditsupport]

I've just resolved an issue with DDI on a customers 3300CXI II. However, there seems to be another problem.
The customer complains that they have to routinely cold start the ccu. This is because the (single) ISDN2 appears to lock up. Indeed, it was in this state when I arrived on-site. The NTE9 has a flashing green and the BRI port appears to be steadily lit. On restart (after 20 or so minutes) all is fine, although I've noticed that BRI port 2 left hand (red) LED is on despite there not being a cable plugged in. My initial guess is that the 4 port BRI card is faulty but would anyone else like to comment?

 

[wireman50]

Flashing green means the NTE can't see a connection to any equipment on its S bus. What colour is the steady light on the card?(green I assume?) The red light is because that port has been programmed but there is nothing plugged into it. Won't matter as long as the liness associtated to it are not in the line group.

Have you tried reseating the card as this often cures faults like that but I suspect it goes deeper than that and you may have a line fault rather than a card fault.

What does the maintanence log show? Any faults on the BRI circuits? I say this because I've had very similar faults and every time its been down to a faulty line filling the fault buffers and then it stops working.

 

[miditsupport]

Yes, the steady light is indeed green. I think your comments on the second BRI slot make sense as the system did have two BRI connections at one time. I did check if the card was seated correctly but didn't remove it to replace.

Apparently, the ISDN was locked up again Saturday morning so it lasted less than 16 hours. BT were asked to check the line (when it was faulty) and their response was 'no alarms recorded in the exchange alarm log'. A POR restored the system as before.

Sadly, the customer uses on of BT's cr@ppier routers so VPN'ing in to the switch and checking the fault logs isn't an option (the site is 72 miles away). Also, I'm not sure if the customer level access allows access to the logs. I'm assuming from your comments that a POR resets the fault buffers?

Just as a matter of interest, what should the system admin user & password be?

 

[wireman50]

Indeed and every time BT has said 'no faults found' we have called them out and discovered a faulty line Its a risk because of their 'no fault found' charging but unless you can go and run a BERT test on the line. JOOI has anyone reproted 'noisy' or odd sounding lines and have you asked?

Port forward will do it and you should be able to lock it down to your own IP address.

system and password are the defaults.

 

[miditsupport]

I've contacted the customer this morning to see if the systems locked out or not and all appears to be fine. There's no mention of poor line quality but they aren't a heavy system user (this system is a perfect example of BT's overselling capabilities, 1 line and 4 extensions!). However, I've asked them to log any difficulties or anomolies to enable me to cross check with the system log.

It looks like the customer's been persuaded to change to a Draytek router so it'll be pre-programmed with PF before it's sent out.

Thanks for the info about the system / password. I thought that I'd got it right. It looks as if some enterprising soul has changed this and not let anyone know. Is there any way of resetting this without defaulting the system or, as someone else mentioned in another post, piggy-backing this unit off another CCU?

 

[wireman50]

look at the lost on the same page as yours about resetting passwords and do a search theres lots on here about it.

 

[james1982]

if you can gain remote access to the 3300 I suspect a load of the BRI card will return service in the event of the failure occuring.

I appreciate this isnt a permanent fix and is far from ideal however it beats continually resetting the system and will reduce downtime that the customer must be experiencing!

From maintenance commands type load followed by the PLID of the ISDN circuit (found in trunk assignement if i recall correct).

We see this issue regular on ISDN2 cards however it is generally more present when the port is configured as SBUS with a device conneting - fax server, VC unit, ISDN TA etc

 

[tdmneil]

The answer is probabaly no, but do they have any other devices plugged in at the NTE?, video confernecing etc. I've found on several occasions if I plug in my ISDN tester (ISDN butt telephone) in to the 2nd port on the NTE to do a bert test the Mitel's BRI card will lockup and the only way for it to sync again is a full reboot (never tried the load command, but will do in future!). The other thing I guess to try is check the dip switches on the NTE and make sure they're set to 'short' or S. The other thing to do is move the connection to another port on the BRI card (making the appropriate changes to the digi link decriptors, trunk assignment, trunk groups etc and see if the fault re-occurs. Also if BT installed the 3300 then the 'system' password will have been changed- this is never given out- so password recovery is your only option.... And if it's 4.2 then it's (so far as I know) then you're completely stuffed unless you can raise a ticket with Mitel.

 

[wireman50]

Thats more likely to do with whether its set to PtP or PtMP. If its set to PtP (or system access as BT quaintly put it) then it won't like another piece of equipment being plugged into the NTE and will cause everything to lock up (this happens right down to the Mitel/TSc/Phillips iMAGINATION switches and a reboot is the only cure although I have been told a load command will work on the 3300).

If its set to PtMP then it should not lock anything up but odds are if you ordered a ISDN off BT and told them its for a switch then you will have PtP.

 

[miditsupport]

Morning Everyone.

Many thanks for your various posts, they've all been pretty useful. The system has (unsurprisingly) locked up again and the customer is currently doing battle with BT (!) so am waiting for the outcome of this before travelling down there again.

They don't have any other devices plugged into the NTE but I will check the DIP switch settings on my next visit (as ever the NTE is in a very awkward location at the back of the 'IT cupboard'! I suspect changing the BRI port will require the system password...

On the subject of passworde, surely if the equipment is customer owned it's unethical for BT to change the password and withold it? I'm not sure which version the switch is but as it's less than 2 years old suspect it's going to have a fairly up to date software load.