Subject: (usr-tc) Bad modems

From: Steve Cobb <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 06 Apr 2000 19:33:33 +0000

Hi all,

I recently had a problem that I want to know if someone knows how to correct ad how to prevent.  I have 2 HiperDSP cards in a TC chassis.  The slot 2 card accepts calls on all 23 ports successfully and then rolls to slot 1 beginning at port 23.  I had a problem that when the next dialup hit ports 22 or 21 they got a high pitch and didn't handshake.  I disabled modems 22 and 21 and then my dialup got busy signals.  Apparently the chassis wouldn't let customers past the two disabled modems.  I have just rebooted slot 1 and everything seems to be working now so maybe that was the fix.  But it was about 4 hours before I knew that this was happening.  Is there a way to monitor for modems giving a "Dialup Invalid" response or not accepting connections?

Thanks,

Steve Cobb

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Steve Cobb
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From: K Mitchell <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 06 Apr 2000 22:12:36 +0000

At 02:04 PM 3/17/00 -0500, Steve Cobb wrote:
>Hi all,
>
>I recently had a problem that I want to know if someone knows how to
correct ad how to prevent.  I have 2 HiperDSP cards in a TC chassis.  The
slot 2 card accepts calls on all 23 ports successfully and then rolls to
slot 1 beginning at port 23.  I had a problem that when the next dialup hit
ports 22 or 21 they got a high pitch and didn't handshake.  I disabled
modems 22 and 21 and then my dialup got busy signals.  Apparently the
chassis wouldn't let customers past the two disabled modems.  I have just
rebooted slot 1 and everything seems to be working now so maybe that was
the fix.  But it was about 4 hours before I knew that this was happening.
Is there a way to monitor for modems giving a "Dialup Invalid" response or
not accepting connections?

  This problem is commonly known as "hung modem pairs". Instead of
disabling the modems, you need to soft-busy them through TCM. That will
cause the channels to show as "in use" at the telco end and calls will roll
over to the next available channel.
  As for monitoring, the only method I'm aware of is a perl script that can
be run from a webpage. It will send the results to a page giving connection
and failure numbers, as well as failure percentages. I activate mine
manually, but it could probably be set to run automatically somehow. You
can see the results at http://www.keyconn.net/mrtg/modem-fail.htm and pick
up a copy of the script at www.keyconn.net/misc/badmodems.zip

-- 
Kirk Mitchell-General Manager    [email-masked]
Keystone Connect                 Unlock Your World
Altoona, PA  814-941-5000        http://www.keyconn.net

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From: "Clint R. Sparks" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Apr 2000 01:51:21 +0000

One other thing you can do to monitor them that is useful for us is to setup
a program like q-page on your server or something similar and get an
alpha-numeric pager and setup snmp monitoring for bad modems setting the
thresholds wherever you want them like ours is set to page us if there are
more than 25 failures on any one modem within 1 hour. Plus you can have a
separate modem dial into your TC every half hour is what we do and if it
gets a busy signal it pages us with that exact message. The monitoring of
bad modem pairs can even be setup to tell you which card and ports on that
card are failing right to your pager. It makes our response to problems
quick and we do not have to set there and watch it all the time.

Thank you,

Clint R. Sparks
ComQuest Internet Services
[email-masked]

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From: Kenneth Nye <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2000 20:52:10 +0000

When I try this script I am told that I dont have smnp_session.pm ? do I
need this to run it, and if so where do I get it?
														Thanks
															Ken

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From: Mike Andrews <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2000 21:06:18 +0000

It's part of the MRTG distribution...  see www.mrtg.org.

Mike Andrews (MA12) * [email-masked] * http://www.bit0.com/
VP, sysadmin, & network guy, Digital Crescent Inc, Frankfort KY
Internet services for Frankfort, Lawrenceburg, Owenton, Shelbyville
www.fark.com: If it's not news, it's Fark.  (Or something like that.)

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