It is always a bad idea to generalize anything about local telco practices. There are lots of options for configuring ISDN lines, analog lines, or channalized trucks and local telco's seem to thrive on doing things their own way. Even ordering the same thing from the same local telco doesn't mean you will end up with two things configured the same way. Ascend will report the "calling and called number", I'm not sure whether the calling number is CLID or ANI or its just whatever the local telco decides to send. I think AT&T provides ANI over their PRI's while local telco's usually supply CLID over their PRI's. I haven't seen an Ascend with a channalized T1 report any in-band signalling of calling or called number information, but I don't have a copy of the new ascend manuals so there may be an option I'm missing. So depending on how you configure your ascend and what you order from the telco, you may or may not get calling number information. Livingston and Cisco have many of the same configuration options. And then you have the mess of VPOPs using equipment like NORTEL where the records may be spread over a couple of organizations. In the end ANI/CLID/etc is just a lame substitute for knowing who is your customer. As long as instant dialup accounts are the norm, I expect ghost customers to also be the norm. True, some percentage are stolen accounts, spoofed addresses, and so forth; but in my experience the ghost customers are a huge source of the current problems. -- Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO Affiliation given for identification not representation
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Sean Donelan