atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems NEC Telephones & Systems NEC Elite IPK System Serious Problems

Hello. I'm a Systems Admin at a small (around 60 employees/cubicles) company.

I've never really had much opportunity to learn the phone system (Electra Elite IPK), so I leave it to the vendor that sold us the system to deal with phone problems and/or system programming changes.

This system uses a PRI (PRT card), we have 16 channels (1-16) in our voice trunk coming from an AdTran Channel bank.

Recently we decided to upgrade our 4 port SLI card to an 8 port card. Unfortunately at this point things go awry. It turns out the tech that installed this system, whom we always had come out to deal with problems, quit the day before the install was to happen. So the owner of the local company came out instead and did the install. He first downloaded our current hardware config database, then replaced the 4 port with the 8 port, then tried to re-upload the database. (He used SAT software, not sure what version, though our software revision on the system says, "SP1034 R4.70" for what it's worth.) According to the software, both the initial download and the upload were successful, no corruption. BUT after the upload he was unable to connect to the system with SAT, it would tell him wrong password no matter whether he tried the default password or anything else he could think of.

Eventually, he was stuck and called in the guy that quit on him. This guy is our normal guy, and he had to reprogram the system pretty much from scratch using a phone terminal. It took him a few hours, but when we left that night, everything seemed to be working as far as incoming and outgoing calls, fax lines etc.

Next morning, we start seeing these issues. They occur seemingly at random:

1. We dial one number, get connected to a number someone else is trying to dial. This took a few days to realize that this is what is happening. One of our employees got connected to a number the person sitting in the cubical next to her was dialing. So it appears that it is somehow trying to use an already in use channel to send outgoing calls on? This appears to be related to number
2. Dial an outside number, and nothing, no ring, no nothing, just silence. It could be that this happens when number 1. happens and someone "steals" someone's outgoing line. This could be the "victim" portion of that problem.
3. Our receptionist up front who fields all incoming calls (on a 32 button station) will answer a call and often hear nothing. Possibly we cannot hear the customer who is calling, we can't be sure.
3. People call us and then call back complaining that they could not hear the receptionist when we answered the phone.

Anyway, as you can see something is wrong, and I am trying to get the tech to come in and examine his programming, but he seems to want to believe the problem lies with our carrier. Our carrier, of course, thinks the problem lies with our internal phone system. I am in the middle (not) enjoying the finger-pointing.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to where I might be able to point this technician?

Sorry this is so long, but it's been a long 4 days and I really want this problem to go away. :-)

Thanks for any help / ideas anyone can provide.

If that 4 trunk CO card was installed in front of T1 card and then your tech uploaded old programming back to the system with 8 CO trunk card in place of 4 you system would be acting inproperly because all ports alocation was moved by 4 and T1 ports alocation was moved by 4 either so the hall things has scrued up and tech supposed to know that and reprogramme system accordingly.

Forgive me if this is wrong, but I think we have a PRT card, not a T1 card. Again, forgive me if I have misunderstood and the two cards (T1 and PRT) are not an either or situation.

But for what it's worth, yes, the new card was installed in the slot directly to the right of the PRT card.

Our cabinet is full, right to left these are the cards:

1. VMS Card (Has the hard drive on it, I think it's the voice mail system).
2. Marked SLI B(4)-U10 ETU
3. Marked SLI(8)-U10 ETU (The new card)
4. PRT card marked PRT(1)-U20 ETU
5. Four double cards, marked ESIB(8)-U10, Station cards I believe.
6. Marked MIF M
7. CPU I(100), CPU card I believe.

Hope this helps.

Your configuration is fine. There is no way you can go on the same chanel when you are using T1 PRI cause all chanels controled by D-Chanel. The only things I can think of that either your tech made a mistake in programming for PRI or he is right and you are having a problems with your carrier cause of both way communication problems. One person cann't hear another. I would call carrier and ask them to open a trouble ticket to check out a Loop.

I am very inclined to believe the problem lies within our Elite IPK System, because of the way person A making an outgoing call seems to somehow intercept person B's outgoing call to a different number. That just sounds like something is happening internally.

In addition, though not impossible, it seems awfully coincidental that the same time we upgrade a card and end up having to re-program the system, our carrier has a problem. Too much of a coincidence the way I see it.

Edit: Also, I do understand when you say two cannot go on the same channel, but that is not what appears to be happening. What seems to be happening is Person A and Person B dial different numbers at similar times, and Person A takes the channel that Person B has dialed on, getting Person B's dialed number, and Person B gets silence.

It may be database software corruption. My first thought would be to default the switch and hardware reload it. If it is still hapening then I suspect a hardware issue or may be the CPU..

We actually did default it and reload from scratch. It's since then that we've been having the issues.

The tech was just here and adjusted the programming to reflect the fact we have 16 channels in our voice trunk, not 24.

Perhaps that'll help. We'll see.

Keep in mind, if SAT will not let you in because of wrong password you can go into phone programming and enter new password for SAT. I don't know why but this has happend to me twice, once with our switch.

I didn't know that about the password, but I'm certain our tech does. We are experiencing the same issues today after he changed the channels in the programming from 24 to 16, so that isn't it. He's going to come in today and change the CPU board out.

To my mind, (and I admit I'm not even at the novice level when it comes to this system, I'm a computer/network guy) either the CPU board hardware is actually bad, or the firmware on the board is corrupted. We now have several confirming examples today where peoples outgoing calls are getting crossed---that is, person A is getting the party person B dialed, and person B is getting the party person A dialed. I'm now certain this is what is happening.

It's bizarre. It's like playing telephone roulette, and it'd be funny, if we weren't losing business and angering clients with this silliness.

One of my customer had the same problem about a month ago with an IPK, after hours of troubleshooting the tech on site changed out the CPU. Defaulting the old CPU did not fix the issue, also the backup file from the old CPU had been corrupted by whatever caused this issue in the first place. So we ended up re-keying the entire switch, since the re-key and new CPU they have has been fine for 4 weeks now. As a note my tech put in a 32 button phone and programmed all 23 channels to appearing on the phone, with the telco on the phone they found that the IPK was getting the channels wrong. Telco would send a call down channel 5 but the switch would go off hook on channel 11. It took hours for them to figure this out though and it was completely random.
Good Luck