Hipath 4000 - expert access 1

[lazken]

Hi there,

We've had our hipath 4000 with procentre for some time now and are becoming somewhat disatisfied with siemens not so timely response to change requests. We would like to move to more self management using amos, however siemens refuse to give us any information on any courses relating to this.
I'm an ex meridian engineer, so one would think they wouldn't be too cagey about it!

Would be great to hear if anyone has had any more success from siemens with regard to similar courses et al.

 

[donb01]

This ought to get you pointed in the right direction....

https://globalti.enterprise.siemens.com/enweb/curriculum.jsp?K=USA_XCU&itemId=24AAAHN

 

[lazken]

Thanks don.

Have called them up, but they say customers cannot go on anything more complicated than the hipath web interface courses.

Looks like we'll be going back to our old trusty meridian.

Thanks anyway.

 

[donb01]

That's wierd. I've been signed up for 1 or 2 high level courses that got cancelled due to lack of enrollment, and they never said anything to me about sign-up restrictions. There ARE prerequisites to some of the classes though.

I'll have to check on what you say because my boss has been nagging me to add some additional coursework.

Thanks for the update.

 

[BlazerBoy]

Go back to Nortel! I wish I could.

Siemens blows in the new world. ROLM was great and always will be. Anything Siemens touches is crap. Lets start with JAVA, last update 2002. I have every PC that talks to the Siemens product line on its own subnet.

Can you say 1990.

 

[donb01]

I'm not going to start an argument with you, but I left the CBX8000 world in 1987 and thought the new stuff was leaps ahead as far as what you could do. I have seen a steady progression of improvements (and a few steps back on occasion) since then. I'm still a "DOS Prompt" kinda guy, so I do most of my work in Direct-AMO, but I can't say I mind the latest 4.0 version of LC-Win all that much. When they switched from EMML to pushing LC-Win on you they look away the speedy station change command (%CHASTN), but they gave it back finally in LC-Win 4. Any time it whines at me that I can't do something I just pop into Direct-AMO and do it that way, but I do find myself using it quite a bit. I also prefer the ability to access the switch across the LAN as compared to dialing in with a modem. That means if I'm out of town I can VPN into the network from any connected coffee shop and fix problems without needing a phone line.

I would say that's an improvement!

 

[keyset6]

We have a few old 9006.3s which have no LC-Win. I also end up doing most everything in Direct Amo. We can access those and our 9751s (that we love) via a ethernet to serial interface. We even have them on a few cave-man 8000s. The 8k at least had good monitoring capability. I've used the STE 0 0 command a few times recently to get a snapshot of who's offhook. As you probably know there was no monitoring function (except maybe CDR) in the first releases of 9006. I recall TDS - maybe that was available in 9006.3, but I remember it to run slow and have a certain capacity, then would have to be closed then restarted. Then get out of that and back to Direct Amo or EMML. Boy did that make me miss the 9751s. Another basic function even the 8k has is the ability to have a true line appearance of an analog line, we use it often since we have many analogs connected to an RF phone system. As the 8000s are retired we'll replace them with 9751 Mod 10s. The 9006 does have decent ACD capabilities, and true it's nice to connect the 9006.6 directly to the network. The newer releases' Unix isn't as sensitive to a power down shut down. There's a backup copy of Unixware on the drive. I've done many Unix recoveries on the old 9006s after power hits. The latest LC-Wins are nice, but it seems frequently I'd have to reset it. I recently started working on Avayas, they remind me of the 9751. I can see why Avaya does well. I wish IBM kept Rolm & developed the 9751 into something ip capable for those that want it.

 

[donb01]

I'll definitely agree with you that it sucks about analog lines on digital phones - with using a DSS key as the only option for them, and you're right - TDS sucked big time. ACD isn't that bad (for someone who has only been using ACD for 2-years' perspective) - it seems easy enough to set up and monitor. The "old" way of setting it up is kind of monotonous, but the new windows-based tool they have is pretty slick.

LC-Win didn't come about until 6.4, and when it first came out it was actually possible to trash your switch if you tried hard enough. Later LC-Win versions for 6.4 were better, but the problem came in when some admins were using EMML to admin the switch and others used LC-Win - the 2 databases would get out of sync often and then you had to regen the EMML database and then deact/act LC-Win to re-sync it (till next time). Otherwise you had stations that would show up in one place, but not another. The absolute worst and suckiest version of LC-Win was Release 2 for the 9006.5 initial release. That thing blows, and I still have one switch on it unfortunately. That was the first time they crippled EMML and forced you to use LC-Win and it really bites. They later came out with what I call 9006.5A that had release 3 of LC-Win and that one is back to tolerable. LC-Win 4 for 9006.6 actually is enjoyable to use - except when it whines about stupid crap linke not being able to change a master hunt group or stuff like that unless you deactivate the phone first. Then you just pop into Direct AMO and do it anyway.

I wasn't aware of the ethernet to serial capability - that makes me drool. Do you have any issues with handshaking or needing to reset the devices often? It would annoy the crap out of me if every time I wanted to connect to the switch the interface was hosed up. I would love to implement that though on my older sites if the cost is low.

 

[keyset6]

When I was with Siemens I had a customer with a big 9006.4 that would have to do a Generate Station Database about every 2 weeks, once in awhile it would bomb out. True, the 9006.5s seemed to have more issues than the .4 or .6s. Yes, the LC-Win with 9006.6 is nice and seems to be relativley reliable.

I occasionally talk to the customer that had the 9006.4 that now has a 4000. I said to her it must be nice not having to worry about the EMML sync issue. But now there's something else that gets out of wack & needs to be re-synched. Nice not having to worry about that with the 9751 or Avaya.

We use the Digi Portserer TS to connect to older PBX's serial ports to the network. Occasionally some of the older Portserver 8 units would have to be reset, but so far not the case with the newer TSs, which is 2 ports. Once they're set up they work fine, the configuration is quite basic. What's nice is you could set up port 2001 for the PBX & port 2002 for Phonemail, or RMX. I don't have the RS-232 pinouts specifically for the 9006, I do for the 9751 & Avaya systems. Another brand is Lantronix. They're not that expensive, maybe around $300. Our company has the luxury of having our network on RF, so I rarely need to plug into a PBX. It's nice being able to set up the laptop just about anywhere in the building and have access to the PBX. The few times I had no network connectivity I was still able to dial into the modem. Another time I couldn't since Unix was down.