Clocking on a BCM 450 With 5 PRIs & 2 Carriers

[norteld]

Hello all. I have a BCM450 R5 with a R1 Capacity Expansion Card. The BCM has 5 PRIs with 2 different carriers. 2 are for local use only with one carrier, and the other 3 are for long distance with another carrier. My question is how should the clocking be set on the 5 cards? I currently have the 1st long distance card set as "Primary External", the 2nd long distance as "Secondary External", the 3rd long distance as "Internal", and the 2 local PRIs set as "Internal". The agents in the call center seem to be getting random "fast busys" when they are dialing out (whether local or long distance), and I'm assuming it's a clocking issue. The callers sometimes get a fast busy 3 or 4 times in a row before the call finally goes through. The funny thing is that the fast busys seem to get bad at random times, and then they almost go completely away at other times. As far as I can see, I can only have 1 card set to "Primary External", and one set to "Secondary External". Is this correct? Do I need to have one of the carriers change their clocking? Also, Should the "Internal CSU" be set to "On" or "Off"? Any help would be greatly appreciated. This BCM hasn't worked right since I installed it a month ago! Thanks again!

 

[snowman50]

Wow..I thought the max lines is 120 with a fully expanded system.
UK set up 3 max cards 30 channels each.= 120 channels.

Set 1st card as Primary and the rest to Secondary.

 

[norteld]

Hey snowman. Thanks for the reply. Our PRIs have only 23 channels, so the 5 PRIs give us 115 channels. I have my first local PRI set as "Primary External", and the second set as "Secondary External", but the system will not allow me to set any of the others to secondary or primary, only internal. If I change them, the ones I already had set as secondary or primary change themselves to "Internal". It's been a head scratcher for me...

 

[snowman50]

you know something i think i was caught out with that as well.

You are right it changes to internal for the rest of the cards.
1 primary
1 secondary
rest internal.
Cant help with the other issues as we don't carry calls that way.

Use the BCM monitor and check the lines that are used to see if you can see what line is picked up when busy tone is heard.

 

[telcodog]

Take one of the 3 used for LD and make one Primarey and the other 2 internal. Take your other group of two and set the first one to secondary external and the other one to internal.

When I took the 450 upgrade course, we were told that the 450 could handle 130 digital trunk channels (with the CEC installed)but they didn't say anything about the clocking and since the BCM does not support NFAS, we're stuck with one Primary, one Secondary and the rest Internal.

And yes, leave the Internal CSU on.

 

[norteld]

Awesome! I'll make those changes today and hope for the best. If we're still having problems, I'll let everyone know what I'm seeing now. Thanks again for the advice!

 

[hawks]

The one marked as Secondary will only take over if the Primary fails. I would leave them like you have them them set to the LD carrier, they provide a better clock source. The others are set to internal because the BCM is getting it's clocking from the Primary sorce so the others will clock from it. As far as the CSU if you are not using external CSU's then I would turn on the ones in the system.

 

[norteld]

Thanks again for the feedback. The 2 local circuits are plugged straight into the telco's NIUs, so I have the Internal CSUs on. The 3 LD circuits are plugged into Adtrans, and I have the Internal CSUs off. Is this right, or should I turn them on?