[ale] Off Topic: More Telco Questions

[Alan Bowman]

 First off, thanks to those who answered my questions about telco terms.
I really appreciated the clarifications.  

  Now, on to my next question. But first,there's a prelude, to explain
where this is leading. This is going to be rather long winded,with a
tale of telco woe included, so if you're not interested, please press
<delete> now..  Don't say I didn't warn you.

 The company I work for provides practice management software and the
hardware to run it on for a subset of the dental community.  The way it
works is that when you buy our software, you also buy the computers to
run it on, the printers to print it on, and everything else in between.  
We sell the cables, adapters, modems, terminals, you name it...  I work
in the hardware/OS support group, supporting Intel based PC's running
one of several variants of SCO Unix.

  Here's where the telco part of my story comes in...  A lot of the
Doctor's we support have both main and satellite offices.  The sat
offices all connect to the main by various methods, and run off the main
processor. As of late we've been selling a lot of one particular
connection method, Rio boards by Specialix. They're a version of serial
concentrator, similar to a Computone or Digiboard. Here's how this is
set up: In the main office, the processor has a Specialix Host card
installed. Connected to the ports on the card are the Rio's for the main
office, or for a sat office, the LDU (long distance unit), which is
connected to a DSU/CSU(in this case a Multitech 56k Digital Modem).
That's connected to a digital 56k leased line.  In the sat office, the
order is reversed, DSU/CSU to LDU to RIO board. The Rio/DSU/LDU part of
loop I understand quite well, or at least well enough to troubleshoot
when it's not working.  It's the leased line part I don't understand.
When a satellite office loses connection, it's usually a matter of
powering off and on various pieces of equipment, or checking cables, to
get them back up.  But when that doesn't work, the office has to call
the local telco, and have them test the line.  The telco always insists
the problem is in our equipment, so we have the offices back to back
test it, and 9 times out of 10 our equipment is working fine.  After
that, it's a pitched battle with the telco to get the office back up.
I'm the orginator of an oft heard quote at work,"...the telco would
rather chew ground glass than admit fault.." So, my question, -finally-,
is this: How do these lines work? After the line leaves the customers
office, does it go through a special switch, or to a centralized CO
setup for just these lines, or what? Everytime we have to talk to the
telco's tech support (and we support customers all over the US and
Canada), they try to talk as far over our heads as possible, so we'll
get intimidated and go away, which just pisses us off.  The phrase "..I
can latch the DSU.." comes up a lot, but no ever explains what that
means, even when we ask. What we'd like to do is level the field a bit,
not only for our education, but so that we can get our customers back up
again as quickly as possible. Plus, we're getting tired of the snotty
attitude of the telco tech support we have to talk to, and would like to
be able to toss their own terms back at them for a change..


  I apologize for the length of this, but I felt including the backstory
would help clarify my question.  If anyone wants, they can respond to me
personally, instead of sending more off topic posts to the list.


  Thanks,

 ...alan
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