>From: "Matthew Watkins" <matt at knowware.co.uk> > >> When we encountered lots of problems with our Maxes, the technicians >> told us to turn off lots of features too (and we were ONLY running >> ISDN). So we disabled STAC and VJ Compression, turned off Radius and >> used exclusively local profiles, etc... and some (but not nearly all) >> of our problems disappeared. > >> Our solution was to scrap it all and buy Cisco. You can load all the >> interfaces on a Cisco box -- even a low end one. One of Ascend's >> recommendations was that we were overloading the box by trying to >> connect lines to all the interfaces on it. Advertised features, >> like compression, work. And you can use them in combination with >> other features! >> >> After getting an answer like the one you mentioned above, that should be >> a clue that there are fundamental problems with the equipment. >> >> Mike Berger > >Mike, > >I think the DSL equipment we're using is sufficiently different to the older >remote-access products to not suffer from many of these problems. Most >manufacturers are guilty of this sort of thing occasionally. I think the >Max4000 was underpowered for most applications. Mmm. You'd like to think so, but IME the DSL Max 20 (that you're using, IIRC) and DSL Terminator 100 have numerous severe bugs (many--but not all--of which relate to RADIUS support). As for processor power, I recently added a complex filter to the Ethernet port of a very lightly-loaded DSL Terminator and ping times went to 2000 ms and throughput dropped to a mere 200 kbps or so. So much for that filter. Having bugs is not unique to Ascend/Lucent, but the difficulty of getting knowledgeable support in a timely fashion is legendary. Many bugs that I've reported have gone unaddressed for months now (one crashing bug was addressed immediately), and Lucent have given me no reason to expect that anything will ever be done to address those tickets. We just RMAed a Terminator (which happened blessedly quickly, kudos to Lucent's RMA dept.) and new problems arose. Did we get bad gear back? Is it a bug? Who knows? We can't get Lucent to respond to our requests for help. >Cisco have done this too, they are not exceptional. The old 2501 routers >would often not cope very well if you wanted to run both X21 interfaces at >2Mb. The more modern higher-end stuff is not free from problems either. Ever >seen Cisco's own performance figures for gigabit-ethernet cards in the 7500 >and 7200VXR routers? Don't expect more than 400Mb throughput, maximum, often >a lot less if you're pusing a high number of packets-per-second. Oh, and >don't put too many 100Mb ethernet ports in those big chassis - you can't >always fill them with high-bandwidth rated cards and expect things to run >well when the traffic levels start to rise. > >Their router performance leaves much to be desired these days. Cisco's >strongest feature is without a doubt their software. They're now getting >kicked about all over the place by companies like Foundry, Juniper, and >Extreme. Often this is in areas where they traditionally have had some of >the best products. I've spent enough time with Cisco equipment to have due >respect, and I'd happily continue to use the routers for many applications. Your feedback on Cisco gear is interesting and timely for me. We've had so many persistent service-affecting problems with our DSL Terminator that we are seriously considering Cisco, largely on the strength of reputation of stability and support. Performance may or may not be cutting-edge, but stability and support are more important for customer happiness. I don't know squat about Cisco, but I'm getting mighty ready to learn. -- Peter Lalor Infoasis plalor at infoasis.com http://www.infoasis.com/ "Where's my burrito?" -- Homer ++ Ascend Users Mailing List ++ To unsubscribe: send unsubscribe to ascend-users-request at bungi.com To get FAQ'd: <http://www.nealis.net/ascend/faq>