Trouble with Eircom's ISDN box (Siemens)

TomF

I've had ISDN since November 2004 and started having problems with losing both telephone lines.

In January, Eircom installed a replacement "box", a Siemens-Switzerland unit called "Santis-Communicator" which Eircom call an "ISDN plug&play" unit. It was the same model as the original box, I think.

I eventually began having more problems and had many technician visits but no resolution. Then last week I took the bull by the horns and removed the printed circuit board from its enclosure to allow it to cool. This seemed to do the trick. I put it back in the enclosure and it started acting-up once again. Eircom has the box mounted vertically against a wall. Before I could do too much more testing of my overheating hypothesis, another technician showed up and replaced the second box with a third one, same model. After a few hours that also began losing my two lines. I took it off the wall and hung it by a string in the free air and it hasn't missed a beat since.

The enclosure's top has what look like decorative dimples, 168 of them. The second unit which was the first I really took a close look at, had 52 of those dimples in the lower half of the panel drilled through, the rest left as decorative dimples. The new unit has only 24 dimples drilled through, and they are toward the top of the panel.

Maybe ESB is ultimately to blame for the problem because we are in the country and recently had a spate of "dirty power" that was causing a special circuit breaker called a "residual current device" (RCD) to repeatedly interrupt electricity to the power points in the house. Very early one morning in the middle of all this there was a flash and a bang on the pole supporting an ESB transformer behind the house. Two days later an ESB crew went up the pole and installed something (I wasn't here to see it happening). No problems since then with the RCD. My computer doesn't have a spike protector on its power strip, but I haven't had any computer problems, just ISDN box problems.

Has anyone else found this kind of trouble with the ISDN box? The Eircom biddy I spoke with said "I had never in my whole life" heard of a problem with the box.

watty

Rare alright. It usually the line is the problem. Your heating is unusally high or box beside boiler / kitchen or hot tank?

Drill out all the dimples.

I have been installing Data Network stuff on ISDN for near 15 years and never seen a faulty box.

Cryos

TomF wrote:

I've had ISDN since November 2004 and started having problems with losing both telephone lines.

In January, Eircom installed a replacement "box", a Siemens-Switzerland unit called "Santis-Communicator" which Eircom call an "ISDN plug&play" unit. It was the same model as the original box, I think.

I eventually began having more problems and had many technician visits but no resolution. Then last week I took the bull by the horns and removed the printed circuit board from its enclosure to allow it to cool. This seemed to do the trick. I put it back in the enclosure and it started acting-up once again. Eircom has the box mounted vertically against a wall. Before I could do too much more testing of my overheating hypothesis, another technician showed up and replaced the second box with a third one, same model. After a few hours that also began losing my two lines. I took it off the wall and hung it by a string in the free air and it hasn't missed a beat since.

The enclosure's top has what look like decorative dimples, 168 of them. The second unit which was the first I really took a close look at, had 52 of those dimples in the lower half of the panel drilled through, the rest left as decorative dimples. The new unit has only 24 dimples drilled through, and they are toward the top of the panel.

Maybe ESB is ultimately to blame for the problem because we are in the country and recently had a spate of "dirty power" that was causing a special circuit breaker called a "residual current device" (RCD) to repeatedly interrupt electricity to the power points in the house. Very early one morning in the middle of all this there was a flash and a bang on the pole supporting an ESB transformer behind the house. Two days later an ESB crew went up the pole and installed something (I wasn't here to see it happening). No problems since then with the RCD. My computer doesn't have a spike protector on its power strip, but I haven't had any computer problems, just ISDN box problems.

Has anyone else found this kind of trouble with the ISDN box? The Eircom biddy I spoke with said "I had never in my whole life" heard of a problem with the box.

I had many isdn p&p units replaced (4) in the end it turned out my line was on its last legs; in the last few lightning storms we have had we had problems with the isdn unit, on the latest unit the line simply failed; got the line replaced and hey presto it works perfect.

cgarvey

Move IoffL > Net/Comms

TomF

Well, the lines went dead yesterday while ESB had our power off all day. According to Eircom, one line is supposed to be functional whether there is mains power or not. I called it in to 1901 as a fault. I am getting to enjoy the nice chats I have with the ladies down at Eircom, by the way. About 1 pm the Eircom technician rang through saying he had been working on the fault for an hour, and there was definitely something wrong.

He also said, parenthetically, that the ISDN may not have been set-up completely in the exchange and someone there had made an adjustment. Since then (24 hours of crossed-fingers), no problems even with the ISDN box stuck back on the wall.

TomF

The Eircom technician rang again yesterday to see if all was still well. This time he added the information that it was in Tralee that the completion of the ISDN set-up had been done that seems to have solved my problem. I looked up Tralee and Eircom and exchange and found it is a digital exchange with lots of fibre-optic connections. Maybe it also is "ISDN-Central" for me.

TomF

The line began acting-up again over the weekend. Today, Tuesday, the Eircom man was back and did some checking of the wiring to the box. He said everything is perfect from the exchange to the box. I'm beginning to wonder if having UTVip as my flat-rate and calls provider and Eircom as my line and ISDN provider could be the fatal flaw.

niallb

I have UTVip and ISDN also, and am on a tiny exchange in Meath.
We have pretty bad ESB out here too - I had to relace 9 light bulbs last week. I've had very few problems except during serious storms.
I do have my ISDN box on a surge protector (and a UPS).

Sometimes I've lost ISDN service when it's come back after a storm, and
disconnecting the line from the box for a few minutes always seems to bring it back, so I find it easy to believe that Eircom will always be able
to genuinely say "There's no problem" when they visit.

When the power goes,those boxes have a choice as to whether the one line
you're left with appears on an ISDN or on an analogue port.
That means that maybe your PC could dial out on it during a power cut
even though you can't make a call :-)

Try plugging out the power on it to see if you still have line 1.
If you don't, plug it back in and reset the emergency mode priority to analogue.:
NB This code works for my box, which is the plug'n'play unit from Siemens. If your current one is a different model, check the manual that came with it. Alternatively, ask your eircom engineer to make sure you can make a phone call with the power cord out before he leaves next time.

Lift the handset, wait for dial tone.
Dial **#73##2101#

Hope you get it resolved,
NiallB

TomF

Very impressive info, NiallB! I'll run it by Eircom's tech next time he is out (might be tomorrow ) or maybe try it myself. I am a little worried about the **#73##2101# code and whether I know how to get back to where I was after dialing that. I looked up the code in my box's handbook and it says parameter number 2101 is "emergency mode priority at the ab-interfaces".

TomF

Since my last posting, and after trying the **#73##2101# entry with no improvement, I've found the line to the phones and the computer are routinely "dead", that is, no dial tone, every morning.

The Eircom man on one of his many visits here said he had talked to the people at the Tralee exchange and they recommended disconnecting the ISDN box and seeing if that would help.

I thought that meant removing the mains power from the unit, and after trying it with no luck decided that was no help. I put into service an APC uninterruptible power source to keep the mains power from being lost (at least for 15 minutes) and perhaps to do some filtering of spikes from the mains voltage, but that didn't do the trick either.

After five straight days of the dead line in the morning routine, yesterday I disconnected the box from the Eircom wire, and when I plugged the wire back in, there was the dial tone. This maneuver has worked for two days running, and maybe this is what the Tralee exchange people meant by disconnecting the box.

I'm not sure this is the solution, because it seems to me that I tried all the disconnections I could think of in the past, but it is possible that I didn't disconnect the Eircom line from the box in all those permutations (wish I had kept detailed notes).

niallb

niallb wrote:

Sometimes I've lost ISDN service when it's come back after a storm, and
disconnecting the line from the box for a few minutes always seems to bring it back...

Exactly what I found to be the only sure fire solution.
I keep a small screwdriver on the box for next time.

Glad you found something that works.
NiallB

TomF

Thanks for the reply, NiallB, and I should have noted that you wrote in your December 13th post that you were successful in re-establishing the dial tone by disconnecting and reconnecting the Eircom line.

I wonder if it boils-down to something like a capacitor in the box charging or discharging and causing a fault to be sensed, and then disconnecting the Eircom line gets rid of a charge? Another approach that will often work for me is to repeatedly dial my voice line with a mobile. Eventually the phone "chirps" and either immediately after that or after a delay and another "chirp", the dial tone is re-established.

The Eircom line entering from the wall junction box has four wires running to the ISDN box: a blue, a white, a white with orange dashes and an orange with white dashes. The blue and white connect to the "U-interface" jack on the box and the other two connect to the line #1 jack, sharing that connection with the voice telephone.

I was in town today doing a combination of Christmas and birthday shopping and I think I missed a telephone call from and ISDN technician. Maybe he'll ring again tomorrow.

If Eircom can't sort this out, I think I might consider installing a little dpst type switch on the blue and white wire jack so it is just a matter of throwing the switch off then on to get the dial tone back.

niallb

I also think it's a capacitance issue, but I don't think it's
a cap in the box. A couple of miles of parallel conductors
with an insulator dialectric could hold a bit of a charge in
certain circumstances I suspect.

NiallB

TomF

I had a good run from just before Christmas until about January 10th, then my connection started giving me problems again. I was successful using the niallb maneuver (disconnecting the Eircom wire from the "U-socket" on the ISDN box then reconnecting) but as time dragged-on, the line got noisier and noisier, and time between the disconnect/connect cycle was reduced to minutes.

After what seems like dozens of telephone calls (via the mobile) to Eircom's 1901 number to report the fault, a technician finally arrived yesterday. He said the fault seems to be a new one, and thinks the wire pair of the cable from the pole beside the road through a buried pipe (conduit) to the terminal strip just inside our front door has been going bad for some reason. He abandoned that pair and connected to a spare pair in the same cable, then went to the pole and did some more connection switching, then drove to the little exchange about 2 miles away and telephoned me and now our connection is perfect.

The technician says this is the first time he has seen this kind of wire pair fault along this stretch of road, and also promised he would try to get Eircom to run a new cable from the pole through the buried conduit to the house.

niallb

Hope your ISDN now stays as trouble free as it's meant to be.
Happy new year,
NiallB

P.S. I wonder is there now an extra pair available for
some other unsuspecting user in the area...

TomF

Happy New Year to you, too, NiallB.

I hadn't thought about extra pairs coming all the way from the little exchange, but I suppose they have to be there for me to be on the Internet now! I also wonder how many spares there could be in the lines from the exchange for future sufferers. Of course by the time other lines start to go bad, Eircom will have us all on Broadband and will be using fibre optics, and the only danger will be flying pigs hitting the lines and breaking them.