atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Wiring - Telecom Carriers - Trunks & Services T1's, CSU's and DSU's Trouble shooting tips?

To all THANKS for these tips, hope many more are to come. My responsibities as a CO tech are from the incoming signal, whether it is generated in my CO , or incoming from a IXC ( AT&T, Sprint, CLEC...) through my office. The signal path might be all DS0, DS1, DS3 or up to any optic levels OC 3 through 192 and yes this does include HDSL. This includes any and all MUX's, DCS's, fiber jumpers coax's the whole path in my office. So you can imagine all the different errors and troubles I potentially can encounter. I am just very glad I found this site for advise from techs who have been in my boots...

Now you tell us!

To OP:

Whenever in doubt, just scream "trouble out" and deal with whatever comes back... :rofl:

No.........Please do not scream "Trouble out" if you not in fact sure the trouble is out. I work outside and it is very frustrating to chase ghost trouble on the outside, especially if its a span with with 10-18 repeaters on it. You guys in the co have a frame to find a problem on......we techs outside have many miles of crappy plant to chase.....please dont cry wolf if there is no wolf

It's not called crying wolf...where I am (and I'm a field tech as well) we refer to it as "job security"... :toast:

All jokes aside, most of today's inside folk cry wolf when uncertain, while the outside forces claim the wolf is inside the CO when they don't feel like dealing with the aforementioned garbage once known as copper plant...

I agree with the job security aspect....I just don't like it when they cry wolf at night and then I get a callout at 1am....

Well...that's where the $$$ is in our line of work... :shrug:

Shortly after "Divestiture" of the Bell system and please forgive me for continuing to reference it, but to us Bell Heads, our world changed for the worse after it, we started hearing the phrase "when in doubt dispatch out" from the testing technicians. In the old days the tester would have to be 10000000% sure the trouble was "out" before a dispatch was requested.

John,

Nowadays it's "even when not in doubt dispatch out"...

Let me share a piece of my (fairly typical) workday from yesterday...

The customer in question reported trouble on 4 PRI circuits. Trouble reported " a 5 second delay before the line rings on the other end ".

Their IT guy (who knows me pretty well at this point) greeted me with "what are you doing here?"

Exactly.

Had anyone bothered to spend 30 seconds actually reading the trouble report, the ticket would've gone right to the switch which is where I sent it...after wasting time to prove that we could run clean "all patterns" to smart jacks on all four circuits...

One easy Saturday for me. But it doesn't make it right...

"Had anyone bothered to spend 30 seconds actually reading the trouble report"

This happens every hour, every day, everywhere, throughout this country. Take some degree of solace in knowing that yours is not the exception but the rule.