Hi,
How important is the phone to you? I mean, given some situation that
arises, can we solve it without the phones?
Just curious.
You can ignore me if you want. That's okay.
Jane
If the network is down, the phone is critical. For any complicated problem,
the phone is also critical. If the phone network is down too, a cell phone
may also be important.
There's no substitute for an actual face-to-face conversation, either.
on 9/11 most telco lines into and out of NYC were congested or
non-functioning. Even cell phones were impacted because they ultimately use
wirelines. But, not withstanding all of the telco problems.... AIM, IRC,
and email worked best for communications.
Now, whether or not you would be able to solve problems without vocal
communications remains to be seen. Ultimately it revolves around having the
ability to adequately define the problem in writing as well as having good a
reader ready to interpret your message.
-Jim P.
I probably should take your advice, but that's an interestingly ambiguous
question so I'll indulge on a slow Friday afternoon. Anything to derail
that spews thread.
"phone" is a tricky word. By phone do you mean an actual handset? Or do
you mean a handset with a pots line? Or does your definition include
voip? Or do you mean "phone" to encompass all audio communication devices?
Or do you mean "phones" to represent the entire PSTN?
What kind of situation are you referring to? A small bowel accident? Or a
fiber cut? Your kid got in a fight at school? Or are most of your frame
relay circuits bouncing?
Basically, anybody can answer whatever they want based on the lack of
detail in the question. I'd love to take both sides of the bet so I can
collect from both you and your boss...
Andy
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Andy Dills 301-682-9972
Xecunet, LLC www.xecu.net
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Dialup * Webhosting * E-Commerce * High-Speed Access
and in particular, one point that the inexperienced often overlook, but
probably 99% of the readership of this list is familiar with, is that a
modem in a remote equipment cabinet is a good thing, as when you blow a
router config and it stops talking to the network, dialing into it via
said modem is the only quick path to saving your job.
richard
Andy Dills wrote:
> Hi,
>
> How important is the phone to you? I mean, given some situation that
> arises, can we solve it without the phones?
>
> Just curious.
>
> You can ignore me if you want. That's okay.I probably should take your advice, but that's an interestingly ambiguous
question so I'll indulge on a slow Friday afternoon. Anything to derail
that spews thread."phone" is a tricky word. By phone do you mean an actual handset? Or do
you mean a handset with a pots line? Or does your definition include
voip? Or do you mean "phone" to encompass all audio communication devices?
Or do you mean "phones" to represent the entire PSTN?What kind of situation are you referring to? A small bowel accident? Or a
fiber cut? Your kid got in a fight at school? Or are most of your frame
relay circuits bouncing?Basically, anybody can answer whatever they want based on the lack of
detail in the question. I'd love to take both sides of the bet so I can
collect from both you and your boss...
I bet you could.
By "phone" I mean PSTN and by situation, I mean something involving a
SNAFU on your network (excuse me, IP network), another network your
network depends on.
Clear?
Andy
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Andy Dills 301-682-9972
Xecunet, LLC www.xecu.net
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Dialup * Webhosting * E-Commerce * High-Speed Access
Thanks for not ignoring me 
Jane
BTW, what does FIARK mean?
Thus spake "Pawlukiewicz Jane" <pawlukiewicz_jane@bah.com>
How important is the phone to you? I mean, given some situation that
arises, can we solve it without the phones?Just curious.
The problem is typically locating the person you need to communicate with, not
the medium.
Telephone has the advantage of speed, and IM/IRC has the advantage of easy
multitasking. Probably a draw in many situations.
S
IM/IRC/email also has the ability to copy/paste text, so it's a lot
easier than trying to tell someone something complex over the phone
(command to type in, circuit ID, TT# or such).
- James
We recently had a piece of equipment fail outside of Bronson, FL. This was
in a regeneration hut, 50 miles from almost anywhere useful. There is no
cellular service and no POTs in the HUT. The closest employee was a woman
who although bright was not very familiar with the equipment installed.
Because the management channel (IP) was still working to the site, an
engineer here in Quincy, MA was able to step her through fixing the problem
using nothing but IRC and two-way pager. It took her 35 minutes to correct
the issue.
Harder than with a phone? Yes. Impossible? No. Without that IP channel
running? It would have taken closer to an hour and a half by my guess but
still doable. Smoke signals or semaphore? I won't hazard a guess.
-vb
Regards,
We have this wonderful invention called two-way radio. (grin) Our repeater has an autopatch, so you can hold a conversation from any landline to the mobile unit in the field or vice versa. Its been real helpful, like when aligning microwave dishes.
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2002 19:43:30 -0400
From: blitz <blitz@macronet.net>
Some sort of orderwire channel might be helpful in this
situation as well, as long as the fiber is up, youll have a
voice grade line to the NOC.
SONET provides for a (couple?) DS0 channels in the headers.
Eddy
It took her 35 minutes to correct the issue.
^^^^^^^^^^
That's my "Rule of Nine," to wit: It takes nine times as long over the phone as it does in person. Where "it" consists of fixing something by typing commands.
I fixed a bunch of badly destroyed disk mirrors once, at 3 a.m., with my eyes closed, lying in bed. Took 45 minutes. Would have taken 5 minutes if I were "driving". (But it couldn't reach the machine directly myself, so I stayed in bed and talked someone else through it.)
Sycamore equipment does not have orderwire. 
And we don't breakout with
the muxes that do at every location.
The important thing is you have some way to communicate, not what method
is used for the communication.
If the PSTN fails, use the Internet. If the Internet fails use PSTN. If
both fail use radio, telegraph, pony express or fall back to what the
Roman Empire used, runners. Civilization has existed far longer than the
telephone.
You're thinking of the path trace buffer, and it's 64K, one DS0 channel.
-C
Scott Francis wrote:
> Hi,
>
> How important is the phone to you? I mean, given some situation that
> arises, can we solve it without the phones?If the network is down, the phone is critical. For any
complicated problem, the phone is also critical. If the phone
network is down too, a cell phone may also be important.
For key suppliers it's important that:
1. You have a cell phone with a provider who uses a diverse fibre
path to your core data suppliers.
2. Your supplier has at least one contact number that doesn't depend
on their own network, so you can call them when there's a fibre
cut.
In Australia, our second largest telco has their mobile (cell) phone
network, land lines (including their support line indial), long distance
services, intelligent network services (1300 number routing) and
internet
services all depend on the one SONET ring. A ring that was once cut in
two
locations within 12 hours (before the repair was finished on the first
location, the second location was cut). That pretty much wiped them off
the map Australia-wide (their whole phone and data network couldn't
operate
without key central services) for a considerable amount of time.
Hopefully
they've identified this central point of failure now, and the one
massive
failure will be the only one we experience from them, but it's hard to
know
as simultaneous fibre cuts on both sides of a SONET ring (hundreds or
thousands of kilometers apart) are somewhat rare.
The same telco also has only a single fibre path to Perth, which meant
when I used to be in Perth, whenever they had a fibre cut we couldn't
call
them - all we could do was bring up our backup links to another telco
and
send/receive email relating to the fibre cut. (There's actually two
fibre
paths to Perth, one owned by the largest Australian telco & ISP, one by
the second largest telco & ISP, but they don't appear to have engaged in
fibre swaps with each other on this path. A lot of companies who aren't
aware of the small number of fibre paths buy their primary service from
one
of these telcos and a secondary service from a smaller telco, and then
are
surprised when both services fail at once...)
David.
My understanding is that there are two orderwire circuits on any (vendor
supported) SONET transmission system, E1 and E2. E1 allows for SOH
orderwire between SONET sections (Regen sites/Huts), E2 allows for LOH
orderwire between SONET line terminating equipment (adm).
I don't see any way to utilize the 64k in J1 (Path Trace), as J1 contains
a repeated fixed-length string.
Is there any equipment which provides for a path layer orderwire in the
SPE?
Joe
Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2002 18:59:52 -0700 (PDT)
From: Joe Wood
My understanding is that there are two orderwire circuits on
any (vendor supported) SONET transmission system, E1 and E2.
E1 allows for SOH orderwire between SONET sections (Regen
sites/Huts), E2 allows for LOH orderwire between SONET line
terminating equipment (adm).
If all else fails, read the manual...
Yes, E1 and E2 are the DS0 channels of which I was thinking.
Eddy
Hi Jeff,
I'm finally collating this information. I may have won the bet but now I
have to figure out what percentage of y'all said what. I'll post the
results but my boss . . .
go figure.
Anyway, what's IM stand for?
Thanks,
Jane
Jeff Shultz wrote: