What are IT Geeks doin in the telcom business 25

[firefoxfire]

I am wondering what everyones experience is with these IT geeks that think they belong in the telcom business simply because they can plug an IP or VOIP telephone set into a router.

I keep hearing complaints from people all over the place that they are promised the world from these guys and they get nothing but excuses from lost and poor connections to system and networks that are continually off line.

I hear that the features and services are never correctly configured and that training is very poor or the customer is just given a manual or directed to a web site for help.

These guys are just not telephone people and have no idea how proper cable management works let alone the proper needs of the customers.

They introduce and install equipment that is overwhelming to the customers and their employees with to many features and complicated menus to work with etc.. They are trying to force a telephone to do the work of a computer or Laptop.

And the attitude I get from these guys is usually paranoid, unreliable and uncooperative to say the least.

What is your experience with these guys getting into the telcom business?

Thanks

 

[firefoxfire]

I also make it 100% clear and that is included in my contracts and service agreements that "I" am the only one who can touch my network during the warranty period. I have a trade mark way that I install my parts and cables so I can tell when they have been disturbed.

I have on more than one occasion been very frank with clients and IT guys have warned them that if the T guy touches or disturbs any of my work their warranty will be void.

 

[telemarksman]

I have replaced A couple of VOIP systems, with good old fashioned Nor tel, Mitel.

alwayslearning

 

[Oldtimephoneguy]

Okay guys. With all the comments going back and forth and getting me fired up I don't know if I should set my hair on fire or stab myself in the eye with a sharp stick! But I somewhat digress. Here's some more that melts my marshmallows. I've been an on-site tech for 19 years working at 3 different places and I really like it. I'm very "picky" and organized which makes my job easier in the long run. EVERY device, route and everything else that's programmed in my PBX's is being used. EVERY jumper/patch cord that's connected is being used. EVERY test device that's built is documented and deleted after testing. We have over 1500 extensions around our City and everyone is documented as to who, what and where it is. Too many Telco lines, T-1's PRI's etc to mention but again all documented. When I train a new guy/girl I insist that all the analism of mine is maintained. Sometimes we get what I call a shoe maker that doesn't do things right or doesn't follow through until total completeion. And the "new people" of Telecom seem to be the worst when it comes to doing things the old fashioned (RIGHT) way. It really fries my bannanas when I "stumble" accross new extensions built that go nowhere or phones unplugged instead of deleted because the customer said they didn't need it anymore. When I question them about it the ITidiots say something stupid like "well, they can't use it now it's in the closet". I know I'm way too organized but if I'm left alone every extension, trunk, route and ty-rap is accounted for and being used. It drives me to drink (which isn't so bad) that most of these nurds could be my kid or grand kid. Damn, I'm sorry for venting on you nice folks like this but I feel a little better now. But I have to go now, my hair is about extinguished (the smell is terrible) and my eye without the stick in it is tearing real bad.
Take care and if you haven't made other plans, have a nice day!

Frank. City of Cape Coral, Florida

 

[nessman]

Well documented phone systems are great - but it is a TON of work that must be kept up with dilligently every time you move, add, delete or change something each and every time. But it's well worth it when it's done and you have to pass it on to the next guy.

I've seen switch rooms and closets that you can eat off the floor and everything is well marked and organized. I've seen the opposite (which sadly happens more often than not) where it's just one huge clusterf--k because of different vendors and field techs over the years who just come in, do their job quickly and leave without picking up after themselves or spending a few minutes to clean up and organize (i.e., the old Boy Scout credo of leaving a campsite cleaner than you found it).

 

[firefoxfire]

Here is how real Telco people are different from IT people.

We have over a hundreds of standards to hold up. Bell System and AT&T standards set way back in the beginning.

Standards that allowed our Country to lead the world in progress, technology and innovation.

We have pride in workmanship from millions of dedicated hard working and proud people who help build our communications networks from the beginning.

We have a legacy of greatness and solid reliability. He have generations of families who have worked for the telephone company.

These standards have been set very high for us and most real telco folks strive to meet these standards.

This legacy and history is not present in the IT world as far as I can see it.

We have a history of hard working dedicated people from all areas of life who all strive for excellence.

This can not be expected from IT people. They for the most part have computers and automation as their mentors. We have flesh and blood mentors.

This I believe is the difference which will always place us ahead of them in our expectations and personal demands.

Our legacy which we must continue thru hard work, dedication and mentor-ship.

Your comments please.

 

[LkEErie]

Do you have olive green underwer to go with that Bell system worker crap?

 

[LkEErie]

Underwear. This editing thing is really weird. I type and it's displaying characters after a whole word. Must be some buffer problem.

 

[SYQUEST]

I think the Bell System had a KS- number for that item, but I haven't found it in the Bell System Practices yet!

....JIM....

 

[jplissonneau]

Some comments from an IT guy that got sucked in telecom business. Which was painful and cost me a lot, but things are improving now.

IT guys know jack s**t about cabling. True. Not something that is (properly) taught in schools, and not something you can (properly) learn on your own over the internet, in part because the stupid standards are not available online for a reasonable cost (that is, free, as are laws, standards required by laws being de facto laws). It takes a lot of hands-on field experience too.

Most IT guys lack knowledge about electricity and electronics. Sad and true. To the point that many of them can't even diagnose/fix a hardware problem on a computer.

Many IT guys lack knowledge on networking issues. It takes a lot of field experience on hardware and setups they won't have at home to play with.

Most IT guys have to deal with people of any age, profession and experience that think they know computers because they use one everyday (the worst offenders being in medical professions). So they have to be assertive, which is not always well perceived, but this is the only way for them to get some actual job done.

Competent experienced IT guys know more than telecom guys about server room design/management and will keep them in check to avoid costly (in terms of maintenance) disasters initiated by old-school telecom geniuses. No, we don't want a huge BIX on a plywood in the corner to cross-connect all our racks. Sure, you certainly always have done it this way for 30 years. No it's not "the" standard. OK now, let me call the engineer to make this clear and have him explain it to you again.

Many telecom guys have issues sharing knowledge with outsiders (and sometimes even colleagues) and explaining what they do and why they do it this way. They tend to be on the defensive, which causes them to be perceived as "square". Or maybe it's for job protection. Anyway, the IT guy is not always the cause for the lack of communication and understanding.

About "reliability is not what it used to be". Ever used a cell phone fifteen years ago? That's where VoIP is now, with way better audio quality. Also in my place I have seen DSL connections stay up even though voice service on the same trunk was degraded to the point of being unusable because humidity/corrosion occured on the line somewhere between the customer and the CO. The point is, circuit-switched networks are not actually as reliable as people think they are. Also, analog vs. digital = analog degrades progressively over time, digital works and then suddenly doesn't work at all if the signal quality gets low enough.

About the downtimes. 99% is 14 minutes 24 seconds of downtime per 24 hours. If your IT guy can't do better with his systems, show him the door, seriously. A reboot a month for 4m30s gets you 99.99% uptime, and if you only do that once a year, say, for updates, you get over 99.999%. Looks good enough to me, as I am pretty sure many "carrier-grade" networks actually don't achieve that if averaged over enough years. And it is easier to implement redundancy with VoIP systems than TDM systems.

Modern numeric phones are actually computers and their user interfaces are too often poorly designed, which is a problem in all IT fields because they don't spend the necessary resources designing and properly validating user interfaces. This is why the iPhone is such a hit. On the other hand, star codes, tones and voicemail menus are not exactly user friendly either.

... and the real reason you see so many IT guys in your field now:

IT guys are into packet switching. Telecom guys are into circuit switching. Packet switching has finally won (and this causes different, not worse, issues) and IT guys were already in charge of the network, and now they have to do voice as well as data. Circuit switching folks now blame IT staff for all the shortcomings of migrating to packet switching, and stay silent about the advantages. As they don't know anything about protocols (even ISDN...) above electrical levels (and even then, sometimes the knowledge is only in the test tools they have), they won't help anyway.

So basically telecom as it used to be is going away. On one side you will have network folks from IT, because in the end they will have to support these systems anyway. And the folks who lay out cables are becoming something like a specialized kind of electricians (actual electricians try to get into this sometimes, and the result is not pretty). And it will be increasingly unlikely to find a guy that is qualified to install cabled infrastructure and also setup data networks and phone systems. Time to get used to it and learn to work together.


--
A(PS|CI)S-SMEC
IT consultant
Canada / Quebec City area

 

[Dexman]

My background is TDM (I'm a Central Office technician) so keep that in mind as you read my comments below

Most TDM systems should not need to be rebooted at all. If a Norstar Meridian, Partner ACS or Merlin Legend/Magix requires power-cycling, then that is an indication of a trouble. The only time a system like these needs to be powered off is to replace, add or remove cards/boards/modules.

We were given IP phones for our office to, eventually, replace an aging Norstar Meridian. In the 3 weeks that we have had these phones, I've had 2 calls disconnect on me for no reason at all.....and.....a call drop during transfer.

This sort of behavior would never be tolerated with a TDM system, but seems to be, in varying degrees, considered acceptable with IP communications.

I "FEATURE 00

 

[jplissonneau]

There are glitches. The kind of programmer that can write a bug-free SIP / H323 stack / phone firmware / PBX kernel is in short supply, hardware manufacturers don't want to pay for them nor provide them a nice working environment like they used to do in the past, so they go write financial/trading software instead.

But also, in my experience, customers heard/read a lot of FUD about these systems and are quite nervous about it so they notice every glitch and more (often more). After a while and some "coaching" backed by logs and traces they forget about it because they like the features and because actual unexplained glitches remain exceptional (as long as nothing like Asterisk is involved).

Things will eventually improve, as with anything excepted cell phone SMS service. But I already find it neat that on my VoIP systems I can unplug a phone from the ethernet switch (assuming the phone is locally powered or through a midspan), wait 5 seconds, plug it back again eventually elsewhere and not have the call dropped. Try that on a TDM system.

The only remaining advantage of TDM over VoIP is on sites that have rotten analog trunks far below internationally accepted specifications, which results in a weak signal level and/or echo way beyond what the echo canceller in the media gateway can do. TDM introduces almost no latency so the echo delay stays within whatever is between the ears of your customer can handle without discomfort.


--
A(PS|CI)S-SMEC
IT consultant
Canada / Quebec City area

 

[Sympology]

Total agree with the above, you stick in ANY new system and the second anything goes wrong it the phone systems fault.
The amount of calls saying "I keep dialling out and it keeps cutting me off, this system is ****".
One check of their call logs and the ALL calls suddenly become three to the same mobile!
The other 150 calls at the same time have strangley worked ok...Mmmmmm
We have an advantage rolling out our VoIP systems, the old phones and systems are so crap they are really happy to get the brand new kit with a million and one features...

Robert Wilensky:
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

http://alvechurchlounge.org.uk

 

[Dexman]

In my particular situation, both calls were to landlines supported by the LEC and the calls were actively in progress.

The transferred call was from the IP phones to our TDM system (which will need to remain), because the ringers on the IP phones are too quiet, even at their loudest setting, to be heard above the HVACs and equipment cooling fans in the switching area.

For computer networks, reboots and downtime are a fact of life. The need to download patches and reboot are common and acceptable in the IT world.

It was not and should not be this way for voice communications.

Voice communication systems should be able to be configured and run problem-free with no attention other than moves, adds, subtractions or the occasional hardware replacement.

I "FEATURE 00

 

[Sympology]

For computer networks, reboots and downtime are a fact of life. The need to download patches and reboot are common and acceptable in the IT world.

Why?

Challenge them.
We don't patch our servers from one year to the next.
99% of windows patches are not required for dedicated hardware. No need to install .net updates, i.e. updates etc etc if these never see the internet, are not used and services not required are uninstalled / disabled.



Robert Wilensky:
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

http://alvechurchlounge.org.uk

 

[jplissonneau]

Downtimes (expected and unexpected) are a fact of life of any network. Roads, water, power, TV, telephone and else, not just data networks. Things break, regular maintenance needs to be done, and that can't always be done "live". There are known events where CO voice service (including emergency service) was disrupted for hours for tens of thousands of customers. Fortunately now you can (and should, if the service is essential to you) have redundancy with cell phones and cable providers.

Also in general data networks do not reboot. Sometimes the DHCP server does, but if it's properly programmed (that is, not like the ones in some DSLAMs) there is no service interruption and computers will stay connected. A properly designed and maintained private data network could even get a better reliability than what TDM networks can offer, and the necessary redundancy is way more affordable.

Good PBX OSes normally don't need to reboot either, I have seen some achieving years of uptime. It's a matter of policy, mine being "if it works leave it alone". I only deploy necessary security patches, and those that require reboots are extremely rare on my IP PBXes running on computers. It is within the reach of most IT departments (in terms of money and know-how) to achieve PBX server redundancy with VoIP, some virtual machine supervisors will even do it magically for you. And you could configure at least two servers per registration in most SIP endpoints.

Ethernet networks need to be properly configured and secured (i.e have stuff like 802.1x authentication enabled, QoS, a VLAN dedicated to voice service, and a configuration that will avoid a spanning tree failure to ever happen) to avoid DoS and disruptions. Which is usually way beyond knowledge of telecom staff, and most IT guys lack competence there either. Seriously, pay qualified consultants to help you for that and make sure they know what they talk about.

Now the phones. They offer all sorts of bells and whistles, you can configure a lot of things (you should be able to set the ringer to your needs for example, something that is usually not possible on TDM phones) but most firmwares are not too robust when it comes to basics like network or protocol errors recovery. And they take ages to reboot which is a major annoyance. And on some IP phones the user interface is badly designed. This is where there is the most room for improvement.

Also some TDM/media gateways SIP/H323/whatever stacks have way to go. I experienced many cases where they did not properly implement protocol specifications or error recovery. In your case, my suspicion would go towards your TDM system not doing its VoIP job properly.


--
A(PS|CI)S-SMEC
IT consultant
Canada / Quebec City area

 

[jplissonneau]

@Sympology

Critical computer services should not run on Windows period. The NT kernel was initially written by competent people (too bad it's not documented), but the layers of poorly designed crap above that still make it a toy OS. Sometimes PC hardware is not appropriate either. And sometimes even UNIX reliability on high-end hardware is not enough, which is why there are still mainframes around. These things usually run for decades without service disruptions.



--
A(PS|CI)S-SMEC
IT consultant
Canada / Quebec City area

 

[Dexman]

By outage/downtime, I'm thinking of when a server crashes due to software glitches or drive failures. External influences like flooding & downed facilities fall outside the scope of CPE.

The only time a reboot of a PBX or key system may be needed is to fix a stuck voicemail hard drive.

Take for example, the Avaya Merlin platform. It was one of the most stable families of telephone systems because Bell Labs designed them for long life & reliable service. The processors didn't need software updates to fix bugs. IP systems can't make those claims (at least not at this time).

I "FEATURE 00

 

[Dexman]

Our new phones are pure VoIP. It may get to the point where I'll use the Norstar key system phones for critical calls and the IP phones for everything else.

I "FEATURE 00

 

[jplissonneau]

There are reasons why it was possible for legacy PBX/KSU to be rock solid:
- no need to support fancy features and protocol stacks (directory, TCP/IP, VoIP protocols, configuration interface), so the software was simpler to write
- no OS, all the software was written in assembly or low-level C, and the simpler requirements made it possible to write deterministic software and validate it
- these PBX were not connected to public data networks with new security issues discovered everyday, and anyway their designers cared a lot less about security
- all solid state. Moving parts in telephony hardware (drives, fans) is totally a bad idea unless you use redundant servers. On the smaller systems the IP Office is one of those that get it right, and future IP PBX appliances are likely to go back to fanless/SSD storage designs.

I use IP phones all the time for technical support conversations that can last hours, and I do not remember the last time I got disconnected for no reason even though my calls are routed through Internet. My own experience is that they are as reliable as their TDM counterparts (actually so far I returned more failing TDM phones than IP phones to warranty) if configured properly. And this is where the casual IT guy that barely know networking and lack any knowledge in protocols is going into trouble.


--
A(PS|CI)S-SMEC
IT consultant
Canada / Quebec City area

 

[phoneguy610]

Just had an instance of this.

We have a customer who had the person who does their copiers promise them the world and a half with a voip system.

Turned out it was freepbx on a no name computer tower. They never could follow through on setting up a remote worker with an ip phone and the system never stayed live for more than a week. Everytime it crashed the original installer came out and redownloaded free pbx and reprogrammed the tower.

On top of this they charged $25k for this system and 20 of the crapiest ip phones linksys makes.

After about 2 months of the system going down and failure to deliver promises we installed a BCM50 6.0 with 11xx series ip phones a softphone and setup the remote worker.

They couldnt be happier.

Honestly i hope they keep doing things like this.. just makes us look like heroes