I've pulled several posts together that pretty much describe our
experiences with 3.8p19 --> 3.8.
GG> Sorry, but has not been our experience. People who have never had a
GG> connection problem are complaining about retrains, failed handshakes, and
GG> having to dial in 3-4 times to get connected since we upgraded.
Yep, we get these all the time, and have since 3.8b21 (and probably since
3.8b19 since that was the last time Lucent changed the modem code). Most
customers give the timeframe of problems back almost to the day we installed
3.8 (and they didn't know when it was).
CS> I have experienced none of the problems many people report here.
CS> However, my PRIs run error free and I'm literally 100 feet from a DMS
CS> 500 (co-lo space). ...
We are also Colo and have the above problems. We have no errors and
everything is working fine on the PM. MOST of our customers have no
problem at all. It's certain modems on certain quality phone lines, I
believe.
Again... these modems worked fine in 3.7.2 and now don't in 3.8. Most
of our customers are fine, but there is a definite subset that has
problems. Specifically they seem to be on phone lines that are 56K
capable, but only slightly. These people go to other providers and get
from 26400 up to 37666 ... almost never more, but on the Portmaster they
(A) CAN'T CONNECT FOR ANY NUMBER OF RETRIES OR (B) GET DISCONNECT WITHIN
MINUTES OF GETTING CONNECTED.
I really don't care if they only get 24000 here for now (we can explain
temporary slower speeds), but NOT BEING ABLE TO CONNECT at all is a
SERIOUS problem.
CS> can't be directly correlated with bad phone lines at the user's end.
CS> Connect speeds average 44K and I've seen many 53,333 connections.
CS> (mainly 3Com V.90)
We see many good connects too... but NOT from the subset above.
CS> All I can suggest to the people that have reported poor performance is
CS> either Lucent is shipping bad hardware or their telco lines suck. My
CS> guess is the telco lines suck. ...
These people's phonelines do not "suck" ... they are clear, no noise, clean
lines. Their lines are capable of 26400 up to 37666 connections to any other
provider but NOT to a perfectly functional PM3 running 3.8.
RG> - USR v.90 very slow (300 bytes/s max.) and problem seems to be resolve
RG>when deactivating v.90 code from the USR modem;
RG> - low speed connection with some 33.6 rockwell based modem;
RG> - k56flex seems to have better performance than v.90;
RG> - have to connect 3 or 4 times ;
RG> - random disconnects;
RG>
RG>We have a ComOS 3.8 and have 0 error with the "show line" command
Yes, this is very similar to what we see with the subset of customers
described above.
MC>And who can forget the long, loud, annoying failed handshake.
MC>Basically, they dial up, PM3 and answers and
MC>
MC>rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Just a long monotone screech.
...
MC>Recieve Level 2db to -7.5db and all the alarms and violations are 0.
MC>
MC>The system has been up 23 days, 8 hours. Has anyone else experienced the
MC>loud monotone modem handshake that never ends?
Yep! Another indication that we see from the group of customers above.
It does seem that, sometimes, disabling V.90/K56Flex or forcing a slower
connect rate will make the connection usable... New software versions
on the client usually helps too... but we've lost lots of customers who
didn't bother to call and report problems before they had switched.
I'm really ready to see a PM3 software release with NEW MODEM CODE that
addresses these problematic modems.
Later.
Derric
-- Derric Scott Scott Network Services, Inc. P. O. Box 361353 derric@scott.net (205)987-5889 Birmingham, AL 35236 - To unsubscribe, email 'majordomo@livingston.com' with 'unsubscribe portmaster-users' in the body of the message. Searchable list archive: <URL:http://www.livingston.com/Tech/archive/>