From owner-freebsd-isp Thu Mar 7 03:02:18 1996 Return-Path: owner-isp Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id DAA27885 for isp-outgoing; Thu, 7 Mar 1996 03:02:18 -0800 (PST) Received: from MediaCity.com (root@easy1.mediacity.com [205.216.172.10]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id DAA27877 for ; Thu, 7 Mar 1996 03:02:14 -0800 (PST) Received: (from brian@localhost) by MediaCity.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id DAA15361; Thu, 7 Mar 1996 03:08:52 -0800 Message-Id: <199603071108.DAA15361@MediaCity.com> Subject: Re: Ascend 400 & PRI To: gclarkii@neon.nwpros.com (Gary Clark II) Date: Thu, 7 Mar 1996 03:08:52 -0800 (PST) From: "Brian Litzinger" Cc: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: <199603070343.VAA05472@neon.nwpros.com> from "Gary Clark II" at Mar 6, 96 09:43:04 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25 ME8b] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-isp@freebsd.org Precedence: bulk > We're in the process of getting an PRI installed here and I am looking > for information on the best way to hook this up to my local ethernet. > I've got all FreeBSD machines here and a Cisco 2501 router. > Any ideas on which product? Ascend or Combinet? > Gary Clark II (N5VMF) | Director of Operations | Good service at (SHORT FORM) Ascend pipeline 400s: 2B MLPPP session could only obtain 75% of the expected throughput. Technical support is very poor, if you can actually get through to them. Units are not field upgradable. Combinet Everywhere 900: Do not support RADIUS or any other "standard" remote user database facility. Net Express 5000: Wonderful, Wonderful. Not that expensive either. (LONG FORM) With regard to Ascend (Combinet & Net Express are later): I ordered 2 Ascend pipeline 400s for connection to two PRIs. The pipelines sure were pretty looking and had a nice VT100 configuration manager. Regretably they didn't actually work very well. The first time I contacted customer support I was on hold for 45 minutes after which I gave up. (the actual problem is described below) Other attempts to contact technical support at ascend yielded similar results. I then went through the sales channel and got the Technical Support Manager and told him of my misfortunate. His response, not wanting to address the problem with the Ascends, was that he had records that showed the average call was answered in 5 minutes. This in itself surprised me but he seemed proud of it. I asked him what the worst case wait was. Apparently, the nice people who developed the phone system they use at Ascend were nice enough to shield the poor managers at Ascend from information like the worst case. And the TS manager replied that his reports didn't include that information, but that it was no where near 45 minutes. (apparently I was lying to him) And believe it or not I still didn't get through to a TS person. I went back to our sales person and announced if I didn't get through to TS the units were going back. Shortly thereafter I was talking to someone from Ascend technical support. I explained the trouble with the units and they suggested I field upgrade them to some experimental release of the firmware. A fiasco ensued with trying to get them to actually put the software on their ftp site but it did eventually happen. Well, the uploads of the firmware failed, and the units went into a loop wanting to upload the firmware. I tried everything they recommended but the units refused to start working. I even hooked up an RS232alyzer and watched every packet go acknowledged correctly, but in the end, it was still in upload mode. I eventually tried uploading the real release but it wouldn't upload either. During my trials and tribulations in trying to upload the firmware technical support made a statement that made no sense. I queried the TS person on the statement and it was clear he didn't know what he was talking about. Finally Ascend said to send the units back to the factory and they would upgrade the firmware. I told them that field upgradability was an important feature and if I send the units back to the factory it would mean that Pipeline 400s weren't field upgradable. In the end, it was determined that contrary to their literature the Pipeline 400s that I had were NOT field upgradable. I returned the units and got a refund. The problem, by the way, was one of performance. The Pipeline 400s were unable to perform adequately on MLPPP 2B calls. That is they were only able to attain 75% of the expected throughput. 100% throughput was obtained via a NetExpress 5000 in the same setup. Regarding Combinet: I bought 2 Combinet Everywhere 900s. As I do with all products I opened the box they came in and took out the documentation and read it all. (I know its hard to believe, but I really do). When I finished with the manual it was clear that Combinet didn't support RADIUS or any of the other "standard" remote user database. They did have some proprietary scheme which required an machine running Work Group for Windows to run the software and maintain the database. I contacted technical support at Combinet to confirm that I understood the scheme. No troubles getting through and yes there stuff really did work that way. Well, I wrapped the manuals back up and put them back into the box and returned the units. (note that I never took the combinets out of the box. To this day I don't know that they look like). In any case, a few weeks later I got a bill for $600 to replace the broken bezel on one the units. I explained my story, and eventually they gave up on the $600. Regarding Net Express: I bought an NE5000 with 2 PRI interfaces. (at the time an NE5000 could handle 2 PRIs itself, I believe a single NE5000 now handles 4) Nex Express was willing to match the prices offered to my by Ascend and Combinet, so eventhough NE equipment looks horrendously priced in their literature there solution was no more expensive than Ascend or Combinet after negiotiating with them. And boy what a difference in support!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They insisted on sending an FSE (field service engineer) out to my site to give my an overview of the units operationn and to help me set it up. At first I figured that meant the thing was impossible to manage. But after the course it was clear that the system was reasonably straight forward. Ascend's menuing system is nicer, but the NE actually works well. After getting the unit setup things went well, and I had no trouble getting through to NE technical support when I needed to. In fact, I don't believe I have ever been put on hold by them. A few weeks later I did a field upgrade of the unit to the next release of the firmware. It took about 5 minutes and I didn't even have to re-enter my config info. The whole upgrade went hitch free. We started having problems with customers using 3COMs Impact's having their 2B channel MLPPP sessions die under heavy loads. NE took about 3 weeks and was able to determine that the problem was a bug in the 3COM firmware (which is still there in 2.02beta). 3COM acknowledged the bug, and NE kept us appraised of the situation as they worked on it, including a nice report describing the problem. -- Brian Litzinger Powered by FreeBSD http[s]://www.mpress.com