One-sided phone calls

[gregarican]

One of my site locations has a Merlin Magix r2.1 PBX. Their lines to the outside world are provided through an INA board. Lately there has been two separate occasions where I've had to have them restart the PBX. What would happen is incoming calls over the INA would be one-sided. They could hear the caller but the caller couldn't hear them. I made a test call and I didn't even hear the ringback tone. It just was dead silence after I dialed. The site location could hear me, however.

I checked with telco and there weren't any service interruptions around the times this happened. I also checked the T1 stats (they have a point to point to my head office) and the circuit was running clean. So far restarting their PBX has temporarily fixed the situation.

Should I look into replacing the INA board? I figure now they are older I might get a good deal on one, as I know they were a couple of grand when I first bought them back in 2001 or so...

 

[SYQUEST]

You might have a component starting to fail somewhere in the decode process on the INA, since all transmission on DS1 is 4-wire full duplex. That would be my guess, especially if you have no error alarm codes. You might try running the diagnostic tests through SPM and see if you catch anything.

You should not have any problem on the secondary market obtaining a replacement INA. Several of those companies also provide a year warranty and some with advance replacement options, like Metroline (metrolinedirect.com).

....JIM....

 

[dagwoodsystems]

I've seen one-way audio many times, which tends to be on emulated T1 or PRI circuits. What I mean by emulated is that it's TDM toward the CPE, but IP on the uplink.

To be fair though, I will also say that though I've almost never, ever had a problem with Avaya hardware, the INA board (and the 016ETR) are two exceptions.

Should you decide to replace this board in an attempt to find the trouble, I suggest going for the 100DCD as a first choice, then 100DS1 as a second choice. The 100R (or INA) would only be needed if you want to split out and route IP data all within the same board.

Tim Alberstein

http://www.dagwoodsystems.com

 

[gregarican]

Unfortunately I do have to split the voice and data and don't have another device to do the job. So if this happens a third time I will be shopping around for an INA board.

This is a private point to point. One end is a Legend r7.1 with a 100D board and an Adtran Atlas 550 in front of it. The other is this remote Magix r2.0 site with the INA. Since 2001 I've had to replace the board twice. So far that's the only board in either Merlin system

 

[dagwoodsystems]

I've always been an enormous fan of Adtran and would favor them over Cisco many times. The times where one of these units have been in place and there's trouble, it's always been a config issue. Adtran was started many, many years ago by a group of ex-Motorola and Codex/UDS engineers who consistantly put out a great product.

However (there's always one, huh?), I recall that Jack Morgan came across Adtran issues when he did some contract work for Cbeyond. He wound up calling Adtran about the problem, who then had to provide a different software load to correct it. I wonder if something like that might be going on here. I'll steer him this way so that he might share his thoughts about all this.

BTW, couldn't you use the Adtran 550 to mux out your voice/data?

Tim Alberstein

http://www.dagwoodsystems.com

 

[gregarican]

I could stick another Adtran at the Magix remote site, sure. Then it's be apples to apples. Then I'd have to buy a 100DCD board too, which might be a little bit more of an expensive proposition. Then I'd have to show how many INA boards have failed and why the alternative might be better.

Yeah, I too have had great fortune with the Adtran product line and highly recommend them. Our HQ unit has been rock solid and I can't recall a hiccup yet.