Lines dead issue in the mornings - Nortel Norstar CICS

[dpower]

Hi all,
We have an older Nortel Norstar CICS system installed in a building with TimeWarner Digital phone service acting as the outbound/inbound carrier. The Nortel Norstar box was a moved installation (was at an old building that was unused for a number of years) and the time warner service is brand new.

What we are finding is that during the day, the PBX and TimeWarner system behave normally with inbound and outbound calling behaving as expected. However our offices close at 10PM nightly and reopen at around 8AM - we are finding that in the morning, all the outbound/inbound lines are dead and customers attempting to dial our number receive a 'this number is currently not accepting calls' message. Due to this message and the fact that rebooting the TimeWarner digital phone box (Arris) restores the phone system, I believe the issue lies with TimeWarner. However they insist the Arris box is working properly and it is probably the PBX going to sleep (or something similar) that is causing this problem.

While I doubt I've given enough information for anyone here to solve my issue, I hope that you folks can give me enough direction to potentiall call BS on TimeWarner's claims. Could the PBX be causing our problems here? Is there any way that some issue with the PBX could cause the lines to die without constant use?

thanks for any light you can shed on this matter...

Derek

 

[ironhorse17]

Make sure everything is on UPS sound like power issues.The phone system those not give any message only the carrier seeing the lines are down.

 

[dpower]

Yes, both systems are on independent battery backups so there are no power interruptions...

 

[ironhorse17]

Is this a digital box with analog outputs for the lines?
If so before resetting test at demarcation.

 

[dpower]

Yes I believe it is a digital box with analog outputs but I don't understand what you mean by 'resetting test at demarcation' - unfortunately I am absolutely new at this having inherited this problem from an ex IT staff member...

 

[ironhorse17]

test the output of the digital box with a single line phone or test set before it is connected to system.You said you had to reboot digital box to restore phone system.

 

[dpower]

So we're clear, you are asking me to wait until the situation reoccurs (the lines seem to be dead) and then check for an analog line from the digital time warner device. That would tell me that the time warner device has indeed shut off the lines. I will try that in the morning when I expect the situation to reoccur - I'll let you know how that goes.

However, what I was trying to ask the forums was is there any misconfiguration on the PBX that could cause the timewarner box to drop the lines in the first place? As I said before, TW will most likely just tell me that their box is fine and that it is my PBX causing the problem.

 

[HughRunyan]

This would most likely be a TimeWarner problem call them the next time it goes down they should be able to test there gateway remotely

 

[ironhorse17]

They almost always say that, so you can do their leg work, no misconfiguration for dial tone it is cut and dry.

 

[oldestgeek]

If you're using auto attendant at night they may not be getting a release from Time Warner. If that is the case as the lines take calls in sequence they aren't released and when all the lines in the hunt group are busy TW routes the call to the message. If this is what is happening make sure you have your trunks set to disconnection supervision "yes" or whatever enables the feature. I remember having a lot of trouble with that in older systems.

 

[oldestgeek]

Also I forgot to mention, make sure your analog trunk cards have DS or CI on the front.

 

[dpower]

oldestgeek, when I originally programmed the PBX I made sure that the trunks were set to disconnection supervision "yes".

To close out this issue for folks, TimeWarner finally came and swapped out the VoIP box and behold! My lines have been active without incident for 48 hours now.

thanks for everybody's input - I appreciate it!