Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!netsys!vector!telecom-gateway From: well!fgk@lll-crg.llnl.gov (Frank G Kienast) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Quirks of ESS in my exchange Message-ID: Date: 25 Jun 89 18:33:01 GMT Sender: news@vector.Dallas.TX.US Lines: 48 Approved: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 213, message 1 of 5 I am curious as to how an exchange with ESS can have so many bugs and quirks in it. I have noticed the following over the past couple years since we got ESS. Each of the things described below has happened to me at least several times. Sometimes I pick up the phone and their is no dialtone. The touch tone pad works, so there is a voltage, but no tone. If I hang up and retry several times, eventually I get a dial tone. Often this is preceeded by a series of half a dozen or so rapidly ascending tones. Sometimes in the middle of a call (both local and long distance), I get mysteriously disconnected. All of a sudden there is a click and then silence, but the voltage is still there. The party on the other end notes the same thing. Occasionally, the system won't let me program in call forwarding. I dial 72# and get a fast busy (reorder). I dial 73# to make sure I'm not already forwarding, and get the reorder here too. I try hanging up, making other calls first, etc. and forwarding still won't work. Then an hour or so later it cures itself. Sometimes when you dial three digits that are not a local exchange, you get a recording right away. Other times, you don't get the recording until you dial seven digits. Also, no distinction is made between a number that is invalid and one that is valid but requires a 1 first. In fact, the recordings are used interchangably, with the "you must first dial a 1 when calling this number" being used for a few weeks for both, then "your call cannot being completed as dialed" being used for several weeks. If you listen to a recording until it times out (twice), you get a reorder signal. A few seconds later, it starts playing other recordings, such as "All circuits are busy now", or even "The call you have made requires a 25 cent deposit"! When you call an AT&T LD operator (by dialing 10288 0#, for example), you hear four DTMF tones followed by a loud "clunk" followed by about ten more DTMF tones (these tones sound different from regular touch tones). Does anyone have any ideas what is causing any of the things I described above? I could understand this type of thing with the old mechanical switches, but since ESS has no moving parts, it seems to me it should either always work or not work at all. I don't understand how things can work just part of the time, or work different at different times. In real life: Frank Kienast Well: well!fgk@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU CIS: 73327,3073 V-mail: 804-980-3733