from Vadim:

The lack of any meaningful clock source negotiation and idiotic defaults in CSU/DSUs is a major source of rapid link flap, too. It seems that most (if not all) equipment vendors simply don't have any clue of what effect their design choices have in the real world.

I'm seeing that also. I've been using ADC/Kentrox T-1 CSUs lately and they come out of the box set for D4/AMI ... go figure ... BTW: Is there a mailing list for ISP related telco hardware? Or telco hardware as related to ISP's? :) Not that I'm aware of. That would really be very vendor specific. News groups are good for this but like you said it's not data only, voice/video equipment gets mixed in. We talk incessantly about BGP configs, route flaps, saturation stats and Powerpoint graphs, and I don't hear boo about CSU/DSU caveats, typical misconfigs, tips on how to spot DXC/OCU mis-options (Can You Say B8ZS through a C/O that's optioned for AMI???), NIU settings, T-Carrier analyzer tips, etc, etc, etc... It's all black magic for most people. I did hardware/telco at BARRNet for so long, I still have withdrawl symptoms when I see a DSX patch panel or walk into a Wiltel co-lo. me too at SURAnet ... and when I pass a MCI c/o Yes, I know, there are endless mailing lists about telco hardware in general, but those tend to be geared for voice apps, and besides, how long would you read it when the discussions turn to how good the latest NorTel M-1/3 is compared to Brand-X (especially when probably <-1% of ISP's would configure an M-1/3 anyway). Yeah, so you're large enough to hire a contractor to do all your telco. What about us small-fry who can't afford contractors. See if @home is hiring ;) Case-in-point: How many of you tried to figure out why the arrow keys only worked 50% of the time when you used a telnet session to configure a Digital Link Encore DSU / Ensemble shelf? And do you know what Digital Link did as a work around (ans: use the "U" and "D" keys for up/down). DL was real good in getting us a CSU firmware fix for the CSUs. There was a problem where accessing the console port of the DL chassis through a terminal server, the three characters of the arrow key would be received with too much spacing/time between them ... packetman helped picking this up ... Anyway, I made my point. Just curious. nay, too vendor specific ... newsgroups ... John rob.