Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!netsys!vector!telecom-gateway From: apple!zygot!john@decwrl.dec.com (John Higdon) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Quirks of ESS in my exchange Message-ID: Date: 27 Jun 89 07:54:37 GMT Sender: news@vector.Dallas.TX.US Organization: ATI Wares Team Lines: 86 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 216, message 4 of 6 In article , well!fgk@lll-crg.llnl. gov (Frank G Kienast) writes: > 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. Gee, I thought at first you were describing my office! However, being an old hand at living with a clapped-out #1 ESS (NOT 1A!!!) maybe I can shed a little light. The switchmen there consider me their #1 PEST, but I feel entitled to bitch with my 10 lines! > 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 This can be one of two things. The most likely is that the office is simply overloaded. The 1E processor is much less adept at handling calls than the 1A, and since this is, after all, a common-control system, a lot of people going off-hook and dialing is going to make other people wait. Of a smaller possibility: the office has crashed! They're famous for that. > 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. In all fairness, this could be occuring outside of the office in either the trunk circuits or your LD carrier. This happened to me the other night; I had no dial tone for fifteen minutes and when it came back all of my call forwarding on three lines had been cancelled. This was the processor crashing. A "reboot" clears tmp memory which is where call forwarding is stored. > 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 This is defined as "temporary memory failure". Very common. Generally, it sounds like this: dial 72# [dial tone]. Dial number [two dial tone bursts then immediate busy signal (60 ipm)]. Dial 72# [dial tone]. Dial number [immediate reorder (120 ipm)]. I've heard your way, also. > 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. This is just out and out sloppiness in your CO. Small telcos usually are plagued with this, but not BOCs. A "1" is not required in my exchange for long distance, so I've never heard that particular recording. > 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). This is very surprising. It is identical to what you hear when dialing "0+" on a CONTAC equipped Xbar exchange. I can't believe that they glued CONTAC into an ESS office. Even a 1ESS can handle equal access in its generic programming. I'd love to hear that one for myself. > 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. Oh, but there are moving parts! The 1/1A ESS is simply an electonically controlled mechanical office. The actual switching is done with little bi-stable relays. Apply current in one direction and they close. Apply current in the other and they open. Why do you think it goes "kaplunk-klunk" when you get call-wasted? It disconnects you from your party, connects you momentarily to the call-wasting tone, then reconnects you to your party through a "conferencing" path. That's why the second beep (klunk) is less violent: you're already connected to the conferencing port. If you don't answer the second call and they hang up, it goes kaplunk. That's you and your party being moved back to the normal talk-path. -- John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@zygot.uucp | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !