I have a problem with a brand new Max 6096.  I am trying to phase out some
Max 4000 series units.   However ever since putting this 6096 online, I have
experienced som serious intermittent problems.  Lucent has already RMA'd the
chassis of this unit because of a dead port.  Until a couple of days ago,
the new unit has performed without any apparent problems for about 2 weeks
except for a recurring messages in my Cistron radius logfile:

Wed Apr 11 11:00:25 2001: Error: Accounting: no username in record
Wed Apr 11 11:01:37 2001: Error: Accounting: no username in record

When I have the new 6096 online, I get these messages at fairly regular
intervals, usually about 2 to 10 error messages spread out over the course
of an hour.  With only the 4000's online, I don't get the messages, except
perhaps very rarely.  This is the same message I would get when a call would
hit the 'dead' port before the unit was RMA'd.  The caller would hear a
single high-pitch unwavering continuous tone and that is all.  By monitoring
the Max it is apparent that the calls were hitting the Max, but not being
completed.

Monday night those same errors started occuring in great numbers until that
is all that was being seen in the log files.  Each caller was getting the
same high-pitch continuous tone.  Tuesday I spent a lot of time with
Southwestern Bell technicians trying to troubleshoot the problem and in the
end, the best we could determine is that there seems to be a problem with
the CSU's associatd with WAN3 and WAN4.  Because when we took those incoming
T1's and moved them to a 4000, calls began to come in ok.  In all the
processs of trouble shooting, I never rebooted the machine because WAN1 and
WAN2 were functioning perfectly and I didn't not want to knock those users
off.  I feel like a reboot might have cleared some error condition in the
machine but I have been using Max series 6000's for about 4 years now, and I
have never had to reboot one to reset any error conditions.  However at the
other installation I am dealing with a nearly state-of-the-art switch and
Sprint as the telco.  My Maxen there run version 7.2.3 which I've found to
be very stable.  At this installation where I am having problems, I am
dealing with an older Erikson Master/Slave switch and Southwestern Bell as
the Telco.  In this scenario, the orginating calls are from a small town
with the Erikson slave switch.  My T1 lines (plain old channelized T1, no
PRI available here) come out of the Erickson master switch 60 miles away.
So there is a lot of hardware between the originating call and my Maxen.
The software on the new Max is running 8.0.3.  However the first Max before
being RMA'd was loaded with 7.2.3 and was still seeing a lot of of the
errors mentioned above.  So I don't think it is a software issue.  All four
WAN ports are configured identically on the problem Max and are as
configured as closely as possible to the Maxen that are working fine at the
other installation. The big difference being that I have to set Rob Ctl to
Inc-W-200 as it is on my 4000 units.  This is the only robbed-bit control
setting that has worked at this installation.

My delima is whether to try to get Lucent to RMA this unit again.  I don't
really know what else to do to try to troubleshoot this problem.  Perhaps
the Max 6000 is just not compatible with the Erikson switch or this type of
slave/master configuration of switches.

If anyone has any experience in dealing with connecting Max 6000's to older
Erikson switches or has suggestions on how to further troubleshoot this
problem, I would be grateful for any help.

Thank you,
Dennis Duval


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