Music on hold silence causes held line to hang up

[KimballJohnson]

We have a norstar 824 dr5 and use Music On Hold to enable auditing of conferences.

When the hall becomes totally silent for several seconds, the lines will hang up.

We cannot find a setting for anything that might control the held line silence sensitivity.

Is this a known issue?

 

[PERRYPJ]

NO

OLD ROLMEN WORKING ON NORTELS

 

[cook1082]

What kind of conferance is this.MOH has no effect on the lines.

 

[bwtc]

We have a norstar 824 dr5 and use Music On Hold to enable auditing of conferences.

Are you saying that you have your copper lines tapped into your MOH source, so all you have to do is turn on MOH at a phone to monitor a call?

 

[lugerlover]

dont sound legal to me

 

[KimballJohnson]

Actually, not that.

We have an output from an auditorium sound system mixing board producing standard line out connected to the violet pair in the Norstar punch block. It has the appropriate volt and amp characteristics of a typical music on hold source such as a CD player or radio.

What happens is that we place callers on hold and they hear that audio feed rather than a tape loop or cd music. It works fine and we have good control over the volume out and the audio quality of what the callers hear on hold.

The problem is that the lines drop off under very specific conditions.

Since my original post I am considering that maybe the line Disconnect Supervision is the cause.

The problem occurs at known points in our program: there is a 'moment of silence' in the hall and the lines begin to disconnect. Therefore the callers do not hear the next portion of the audio feed.

So at this point I was not aware that the OSI setting of a Supervised line would be sensitive to silence on the Music on Hold setting. Of course the caller on hold is 'silent', so to speak.

So my intention is to change the line setting to Unsupervised. but I also wanted to first test whether changing the OSI affected the behavior in any way.

That would at least give me a clue if I am going in the right direction.

So now the question is, has anyone heard about what factors will trigger a Supervised Disconnect or what exactly constitutes an Open Systems Interval event?

Thanks,

Kimball

 

[cook1082]

Disconnect supervision is for when the call disconnected the system sees no signal from the CO then disconnects.In the newer norstars you can control somewhat the gain of the line .Plus you are dealing with an old peice of equipment.

 

[KimballJohnson]

Ok, i understand it is old and that newer systems would provide more control.

So would you have any insight why silence on music on hold would cause the CO lines to hang up?

Thanks,

Kimball

 

[cook1082]

Try to pinpoint what lines are doing it then move them to an other port.If you have them.

 

[KimballJohnson]

That's very interesting.

are you talking about assigning the line to another port in programming?

or are you saying punch the CO line down on a different pair that corresponds to a different port #?

all six of our CO lines act the same way. Doesnt' that sound like a policy setting?

Thanks,

Kimball

 

[NARSBARS]

A shot in the dark. Recreate the situation while monitoring the voltage both tip to ring and tip/ring to ground. If you get a voltage drop, the lines will start dropping calls. Of course you need to check the voltage prior to the test.


NARSBARS

 

[cook1082]

Do all the lines have this problem?If it is a couple move them to the open line ports and reprogram to the sets.

 

[bwtc]

What happens when you disable Music on Hold ? Do the calls ever drop ?

Maybe you could put on a little "static" in the background & see if that fixes the issue...

 

[RampageRick]

Maybe it's a timer in the KSU that starts dropping lines after a preset amount of time, and that just happens to coincide with the silence. i.e. after 5 minutes, there just happens to be silence.

I'm not sure what to suggest, as our 8x24 has never dropped someone on hold. (That I know of)

You might try monitoring the output with 2 phones. Use one to dial back into the system, and another with Background Music on to check for anomalies at the moment the call drops.

Rather than inject static or noise, you could try a waveform above or below the usual telephone cutoff freq, with enough amplitude to keep the line open. I'd go low, as the PSTN cuts more bass than high-end.

 

[jerryreeve]

a long time ago I had some lines that used IN-Band SF signaling and these lines would drop for several reasons, among them was the frequency of the voice (or MOH) managed to hit the Signaling Frequency that controlled the line, or there was a momentary volume jump that exceeded the signaling unit's paramaters. I am thinking that you might be managing to hit something like that across the audio that you have coming from the sound system.

my suggestion is to take two butt sets and with the first call in from another phone and get put on hold (connect the second butt set up to the line that is on hold) and listen to what is happening at the end of program from the sound system and whether or not the Phone system is what is dropping the call or maybe something else dropping the call that you do not control.

----------------------------
JerryReeve
Communications Systems Int'l
com-sys.com