Travis Pugh wrote:

I'm curious about BA DACS. I don't know if this is standard, but they are the only telco who has also told me "we put a loop up on the DACS, but sometimes it doesn't work ... so don't assume that it is a valid test." And I have witnessed that same happening. If you can't create a simple maintenance loop on BA's DACS, their choice of vendors does seem questionable.

Perhaps, but consider the source. Bell Atlantic told me on many occasions they disable all alarm capabilities on T1 lines. They don't monitor them at all. Instead, they wait for end users to notice an outage. Makes you wonder why all the time and effort was put into developing alarm capabilities in the line equipment. But hey, they're in a monopoly position in my neighborhood, so why SHOULD they care? When I negotiate contracts for T1 lines or faster and the upstream is contracting for the local loop, I always insist the upstream is responsible for restitution for ANY and ALL outages, including the local loop. Kind of screws the ISP, since I've never seen Bell Atlantic fix a T1 in less than 6 hours, but if the ISP didn't negotiate a recoup clause in their contract for the local loop, whose fault is that? -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Daniel Senie dts@senie.com Amaranth Networks Inc. http://www.amaranth.com