Hello everyone 
I'm in a bit of a quandary. I'm an IT at a not for profit charter school located in a very old building that had very old paper insulated copper telephone wire(out in the field) feeding 4 phone lines. I had 3 phone lines dedicated to a main number with central office controlling rollover and a 4th for faxing. This was fine except every other week one of my lines was dealing with grounds, shorts, or opens for one reason or another all sourcing from outside my CTE. At the encouragement of the nice woman who answers our calls here we decided to try to find a more reliable way to deliver dial tone.
Johnny corporation comes in and installs fiber directly into my telecom closet. There is now fiber to an Internet Gateway, connected via Ethernet to a small ATA feeding me 4 twisted pairs in the exact same punch down spots as the original POTS install. Line 4 Fax is fine, it runs directly to an HP printer. I will mention that as far as the Norstar/Nortel phone system went, when I started, I was in a don't mess with me and I won't mess with you relationship with it, mainly because I have no butt set, or line tracers, and I didn't have much ambition to learn a "new" phone system from a company that went through bankruptcy over a decade ago. The only thing I have ever had to change on the system is the time during spring ahead/fall back.
Now, from day one with the fiber very little has worked as expected, if at all. Line 1, 2, and 3 are all reachable from all my Nortel handsets. I pick up any handset (14 extensions) I hit any of the three lines and I have dial tone which can be used to dial out just fine. I verified by dialing ANI that the phone numbers are all where they are supposed to be, in that the lines are all accessible from the same line buttons on the handsets as they were when the old copper dial tone was feeding them.
**for reference**
Ruleset: If line 1 is short, rollover to 2, if 2 is short, rollover to 3 and ring indefinitely . No voicemail or call waiting on any lines
**end reference**
I have had one corporate technician or another here onsite at the school for over 12 hours of time in total in the last three weeks. There are issues with the "virtual central office" built into the ATA that don't roll the lines over correctly, but I can't even get the corporate phone repairmen to troubleshoot it correctly and here is why...
When the ring voltage comes from the ATA it does NOT appear or ring on the main extension (or any extension) for any of the three lines.(Line assignments all have "appear and ring" configured correctly, nothing has been changed). When calling in you can hear the phone ringing on the caller side, and if you pick up the line on the receiving side the circuit opens and works clearly, the problem being we never know if someone is dialing in. I tested pairs coming off the ATA at the source and it is pushing ~48V A/C when a call is incoming. Back when I worked for the phone company, I remember measuring (and being bitten many times by) ~90-100 volts of A/C ring voltage. I don't know if this is an issue. Corporate phone man says it is enough voltage since his digital butt set rings when he is clipped onto the line behind the Norstar... I can't verify because I have only ever had old copper connected from an actual central office circuit when it was working. I don't know if the "incoming ring" is being read by the Norstar, I don't know if the dust cloud disturbance in the corner of the room might have exhausted the trunk card(or something else); I don't know if a bad trunk card would still allow the line circuits to open and close just fine but not have the ringer transmit from source to extension; I don't know if I need to get out my old serial cable, get under the hood, plug in to the box and open telnet and change a setting to accommodate the new "type" of ring voltage.
**While I am troubleshooting I have called the carrier's support and had the rollover being done at the ATA turned off until I can isolate why the Norstar does not detect incoming rings. The Norstar seems ignorant any calls are coming in, it neither broadcasts the calls to extensions or sends it to the internal voice mail system.**
**On a further maddening note when the rollover was turned on at the ATA, if someone was ringing in on line 1 and another call came in simultaneously line 2 WOULD show up and ring on the main extension, but only line 2**
If anyone has suggestions or questions that I can answer about configurations that could narrow down why the the phone system is not "recognizing" the incoming ring I would be greatly appreciative.
I'm in a bit of a quandary. I'm an IT at a not for profit charter school located in a very old building that had very old paper insulated copper telephone wire(out in the field) feeding 4 phone lines. I had 3 phone lines dedicated to a main number with central office controlling rollover and a 4th for faxing. This was fine except every other week one of my lines was dealing with grounds, shorts, or opens for one reason or another all sourcing from outside my CTE. At the encouragement of the nice woman who answers our calls here we decided to try to find a more reliable way to deliver dial tone.
Johnny corporation comes in and installs fiber directly into my telecom closet. There is now fiber to an Internet Gateway, connected via Ethernet to a small ATA feeding me 4 twisted pairs in the exact same punch down spots as the original POTS install. Line 4 Fax is fine, it runs directly to an HP printer. I will mention that as far as the Norstar/Nortel phone system went, when I started, I was in a don't mess with me and I won't mess with you relationship with it, mainly because I have no butt set, or line tracers, and I didn't have much ambition to learn a "new" phone system from a company that went through bankruptcy over a decade ago. The only thing I have ever had to change on the system is the time during spring ahead/fall back.
Now, from day one with the fiber very little has worked as expected, if at all. Line 1, 2, and 3 are all reachable from all my Nortel handsets. I pick up any handset (14 extensions) I hit any of the three lines and I have dial tone which can be used to dial out just fine. I verified by dialing ANI that the phone numbers are all where they are supposed to be, in that the lines are all accessible from the same line buttons on the handsets as they were when the old copper dial tone was feeding them.
**for reference**
Ruleset: If line 1 is short, rollover to 2, if 2 is short, rollover to 3 and ring indefinitely . No voicemail or call waiting on any lines
**end reference**
I have had one corporate technician or another here onsite at the school for over 12 hours of time in total in the last three weeks. There are issues with the "virtual central office" built into the ATA that don't roll the lines over correctly, but I can't even get the corporate phone repairmen to troubleshoot it correctly and here is why...
When the ring voltage comes from the ATA it does NOT appear or ring on the main extension (or any extension) for any of the three lines.(Line assignments all have "appear and ring" configured correctly, nothing has been changed). When calling in you can hear the phone ringing on the caller side, and if you pick up the line on the receiving side the circuit opens and works clearly, the problem being we never know if someone is dialing in. I tested pairs coming off the ATA at the source and it is pushing ~48V A/C when a call is incoming. Back when I worked for the phone company, I remember measuring (and being bitten many times by) ~90-100 volts of A/C ring voltage. I don't know if this is an issue. Corporate phone man says it is enough voltage since his digital butt set rings when he is clipped onto the line behind the Norstar... I can't verify because I have only ever had old copper connected from an actual central office circuit when it was working. I don't know if the "incoming ring" is being read by the Norstar, I don't know if the dust cloud disturbance in the corner of the room might have exhausted the trunk card(or something else); I don't know if a bad trunk card would still allow the line circuits to open and close just fine but not have the ringer transmit from source to extension; I don't know if I need to get out my old serial cable, get under the hood, plug in to the box and open telnet and change a setting to accommodate the new "type" of ring voltage.
**While I am troubleshooting I have called the carrier's support and had the rollover being done at the ATA turned off until I can isolate why the Norstar does not detect incoming rings. The Norstar seems ignorant any calls are coming in, it neither broadcasts the calls to extensions or sends it to the internal voice mail system.**
**On a further maddening note when the rollover was turned on at the ATA, if someone was ringing in on line 1 and another call came in simultaneously line 2 WOULD show up and ring on the main extension, but only line 2**
If anyone has suggestions or questions that I can answer about configurations that could narrow down why the the phone system is not "recognizing" the incoming ring I would be greatly appreciative.
