No Free Lines on Long Distance (only)

[LadySlinger]

Hello:

I've had a situation in this office where one morning we all came in and could not dial any phone number outside of our local toll (the surrounding area codes). anything beyond these local toll numbers a message will come back on the phone's screen that says, "No Free Lines".

I've had our phone company look into this. They ran remote tests and came back with nothing wrong. The phone vendor will come out, but everytime he does, he finds that its really the phone company's fault and there is nothing wrong with the system.

So right now I'm being tossed back and forth between the two vendors. I figured I would post this to get some input for a direction I can go.

Thanks!

Ladyslinger

 

[aragon]

It could be a routing problem where the digit 1 is selecting from a different line pool or route, where there are not enough lines assigned to that pool or route.

This is likely.

David Brillert

http://www.williamsglobal.com

 

[senk1s]

do u 2 sets of lines one for local and one for long distance?

as aragon said , hte lines in teh long distance group could be really busy .. or the hardware could be bad, or the service provider is messed up

best bet ...get the phone company on the line when ur vendor is there ... let them fight it out and end the fingerpointing

 

[LadySlinger]

When i look at the main counsel, there are several lines open.

I looked inside at the network log and see ALM: 42-0 and ALM: 41-0, following with an EVT336-00 S5.

 

[jerryreeve]

How are you dialing out? manually selecting trunks or dialing an access code? Like stated above check out your services routing and see if your route tables for long distance dialing have valid trunk pools for the destination codes.

Since you have alarms of 41-0 and 42-0 (T1 alarms) and event (336-S5) "long term alarm has been surpassed in DTI Card" I would suspect that your Telco is not giving you a start on the channel you are selecting.

You are probably going to have to work with the tech on this.



JerryReeve
Communications Systems Int'l
com-sys.com

 

[LadySlinger]

We're dialing out using a 9. That's where we have issues.

For some people, I've changed the intercom buttons so that when they pick up the phone it grabs one of the available lines. The counsels that can see which lines are open are just grabbing an open line and dialing normally (without the line).

LS

 

[hawks]

Do you use the same lines for local and LD?

 

[LadySlinger]

Yes, we do use the same lines for local and long distance.

 

[jerryreeve]

definately need more info here:

on one of the phones that is unable to make LD calls:
What line appearances are there?
what is the pool access?
what is the restriction level?

On your Trunks:
Which trunks are assigned which pools?
What restrictions apply?

On your Restrictions:
of the phone and trunk restrictions that are in effect, what is the configurations for these restrictions?

On Destination codes (9):
what is the full profile of the destination codes?

on routes:
What is the full profile of the routes in effect by your active destination codes?

on access codes:
what is the acdess codes for each pool?
what is the public access code?

You said that you put a changed the intercom lines so they grab a line on pickup. How did you do that? what programming changes did you put in effect?

what software level do you have in effect?



JerryReeve
Communications Systems Int'l
com-sys.com

 

[LadySlinger]

hi JerryReeve

I just happen to back in here and noticed your posting (I Must have turned off the notification in my personal profile).

Anyhoo, here is as much as I can answer:
Software level we currently have (and please don't laugh) is SP: 30JpF03 (manuals also show 2.1)

I changed the intercom lines so they grabbed a line by going under the CONFIG menu, A)Configuration, 2)Line Assignment, chose the ext and changed the Prime Line from INT (intercom) to Pool A.

For a phone that cannot gain LD:
It has access to both Pool A and Pool B
Pool A has the dial out of 00
Pool B has the dial out of 01
The only restrictions on our ext are 900 #s.

Pools:
Access codes for B is (8). Nothing is listed for Pool A.

Destination Codes:
Full profile of the Destination codes are 91##(#). I have double checked the area codes that we are dialing to make sure that theya re still listed and they are.

Routes:
Routes 001 through 146 are assigned to the destination codes.

I hope this gives some insite...
LS.

 

[jerryreeve]

Are you only using pool a for both ld and local calls?

if this is the case it may be simpler to just loose the destination codes that start with 9 and set the poola access code to 9

if you need to use the destination codes then what do you mean by 91##(#) ?

How many destination codes do you have in all?

are you absorbing digits at all?

are you inserting any digits on route 001 or 002

Using destination codes you will have the following actions happen:
the user dials a telephone number: 9-1-213-456-7890
9 is the destination code (destination code 9 sends the call to route 001)
route 001 absorbs 1 digit (the 9)
Route 001 inserts digits if needed such a 1010288
Route 001 sends new digit string to poola
poola sends out digit string on highest number

if this sounds familiar to you check out one set of destination code, route, and pool to see if you can make it route the numbers out.

if you have this as a T1 you could get the telco to monitor the line and see what digits drop or any activity taking place at the time you try dialing.



JerryReeve
Communications Systems Int'l
com-sys.com

 

[hawks]

what lines are in pool A & B? it still sounds like maybe you have 2 T1 and one of them is down (the one that is set up for LD. Like jerry said not realy sure what the 9##(#) is.

 

[LadySlinger]

hawks - yes we do have two T1 trunks set up in the back. I've had the local phone service run their tests.

Jerry - The explanation made things clearer now! The numbers that we are trying to dial are being pointed to Pool B. These are the numbers that come back with "No Free Lines" or "Line in Use".

The numbers we CAN dial are on pool A. I've made some changes to frequently used area codes to dial out using pool A.

To answer your question on the Routes, here are a couple of examples (we seem to have several routes set up)
Route 001
Pool A
Dial Out: 0

Route 002
Pool B
DialOut: 01

Route 003
Pool B
Dialout 120

Route 004
Pool B
Dialout: 121

Route 005
Pool B
Dialout: 122

Etc....

 

[jerryreeve]

OK From looking at the routing table it looks like pool B is your outside Long Distance.

I'll be willing to make an extravagent wager that if you dial 8-1-715-555-1212 you will get the same error on the screen.

You probably originally had all of your long distance going out over the Pool B T-1, a direct T-1 to your long distance carrier. you can verify this by looking at the lines and see what pool each is assigned to 1-24 pool a and 25-48 pool b would be my first guess.

check your phone bills and see who your LD carrier is also which t-1 is going to them. Your LD Carrier has a great interest in getting this working again so if you contact them and explain that they are not getting ANY long distance calls from you till this gets fixed you will probably see them jumping through hoops to try to get you going again.

JerryReeve
Communications Systems Int'l
com-sys.com

 

[hawks]

Sounds like the T1 for LD is in a busy state. I've had it happen here a few times in the past after a big storm. For some reason when the carrier or myself look at the span it looks normal but when you try to use it, it will show as if it is already in use. This would happen after the span dropped and recovered on it's own (not all the time just sometimes). It's like the span did not fully sync up during recovery. So what we did was take down both sides and bring them up at the same time. That got it going agin.