SF Bay Area LEC discussion list?

Fri Jan 22 20:45:10 UTC 1999

At 15:08 -0500 1/22/99, Charles Sprickman wrote:
>And could someone define "DS0 shredding"?

I doubt that term is in general use.  We use it around the office to
describe situations like the following:

A LEC and an ILEC meet at a Central Office, let's call is SJSP.  Something
is wrong with the physical cross connect, say a flaky DS3 coxial cable.
The bit errors introduced by the flaky cable cause some ISDN calls and
digitized analog calls flowing through it to experience CRC errors.  The
end-user manifestation is 40% packet loss of IP over ISDN calls and 56K
analog calls renegotiating to no end.

Why the LEC or ILEC don't notice the errors is beyond me.  Why particular
ILECs seem to have this problem repeatedly is beyond me.  Why the ILEC
frustrates end-users and LECs by futzing with LERG tables and tandem
capacity could be the subject of a good conspiracy theory.  I admit that I
don't know SS7 as well as IP, but I do seem to be able to troubleshoot
these problems better than the people with the keys to the switch rooms.

Problems like this are difficult to pinpoint as they usually affect callers
coming from specific COs of the ILEC.  End-users and ISPs are also not
granted access to any debugging or analysis information that would help
pinpoint and fix the problem.  Telco ticket and front-line people have no
idea what you are talking about.

Thus, my desire to create the SF list.  I have "inside" contacts at LECs
and would like to cooperate with other users who have similar contacts so
we can get these problems pinpointed, fixed, and hopefully apply positive
pressure on both the LECs and ILEC.

[I intend to keep SF-specific information off of NANOG.  I felt the above
question warranted a response though, considering I used confusing
terminology.]

Jim Browne                                                jbrowne at jbrowne.com
    "I wish journalism would return to its glory days, when principled
  incorruptible men like William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer were in
       charge."- Vanessa Jackson, Piano Teacher, www.theonion.com