Re: NOC autom problem handling

[Walter Prue <[e-mail]>]

Daniel,

>My feeling is that if you have problems that are so regular that you want a
>program to help deal with them, you should be dealing with the source of
>the problems instead!

You have a point.  However one thing that I would like to build when I get 
some free time is when a T1 line goes down gather diagnostic data from both
ends and have that available to the the NOC personel when they start to
isolate where the problem is.

We have CSU/DSUs with console ports that can give us lots of information
about whether the link looks good or not.  It can also tell us if the
T1 line is looped.  All of this can be done manually too but would take 
longer than an application might be able to do it.   

Link outages are something you are stuck with because usually you can only
get your phone lines from your local exchange carrier.  They control the
quality of service you get.

A further application you can develop is to tell the application that has
discovered an apparent link outage to go ahead and do intrusive testing, 
loopback testing and such.  It is usually the situation that the application
should ask permission for such testing from a human before proceeding.  If
dial backup facilities are available the application might also initiate the
connection.

Walt Prue
Los Nettos