Ping-pong by phone

There have been some “issues” with the T-1 to one of our customers [1]—basically, every 8 to 15 seconds it gets a burst of errors, thus degrading the actual bandwith of the circuit. It's less of an issue since the wireless connection there is working (redundant paths) but still, it's an issue that needs to be resolved.

Over the past two weeks it's been phone ping-pong. I call The Monopolistic Phone Company Business [DELETED-Technical Support-DELETED] Repair line to have the line tested. The Monopolistic Phone Company does a line test on the T-1 and says it's clear. I call back saying no it's not. They return the call saying yes it is. No it isn't. Yes it is, can you test out to the DSU (Data/Digital Service Unit)? Ohhh look, we get errors, we'll do some more testing tomorrow (this was said yesterday).

So starting at about 8:00 this morning, and every half our or so thereafter until 10:30 The Monopolistic Phone Company called me (on my cell—yes, I gave them that number) with status updates which basically boils down to: “we can't actually seem to locate the error.” It could be between the DSU and the DMARK (Demarcation) (on the customer side), the DMARK and the CO (Central Office) (on the customer side), somewhere within the CO, or between the CO and the DMARK (on our side) or the DMARK and the DSU (on our side).

Note: I usually don't get up until 11:00 am.

Ick.

They're supposed to call in a few minutes with an update, but I'll give them another fifteen minutes or so before calling them.

Update later today …

They still don't know where the error is, and they don't have the appropriate monitoring equipment in the CO at this time to see if that's where the error is. They'll have everything in place on Monday apparently.

[1] /boston/2005/09/08.1

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