rjlang@falcon.lerc.nasa.gov (Ray Lang) (01/04/91)
I am hoping someone can shed some light on the problem we are having here on our bridged network. We have a 3COM IB/2000 Ver. 3.1 ether-to-ether lan bridge. It seperates an ethernet that has a variety of hosts. On one side of the bridge, the e-net has two parallel processors, a VAX cluster, and a Sun workstation that acts as a gateway to a Cray XMP. The other side of the bridge has another VAX cluster on its e-net. Users access the hosts from points on both sides of the bridge. Protocols are TCP/IP, DEC, and XNS. There is no filtering being done on the bridge. It is there just as a monitoring point and a means to seperate the ethernet if necessary. The problem is, the 3COM bridge intermittently resets itself (reboots). There are no error conditions or anything out of the ordinary that we can see. We have replaced the bridge with another 3COM IB/2000 and it still continues. It will occur several times in a one or two day period, then may not happen again for a week or so. It may happen any time of the day or night. We have contacted 3COM two different times about 4 or 5 weeks ago and they hadn't heard of this happening before and were supposed to get back in touch with us. We are still waiting. Has anyone else had any similar experiences? Hopefully Bridge Communications (3COM) is subscribed to this. -- ********************************************************************** * Ray Lang rjlang@falcon.lerc.nasa.gov * * NASA Lewis Network Control Center Cleveland, Ohio * **********************************************************************
skaggs@nsslsun.gcn.uoknor.edu (Gary Skaggs) (01/04/91)
Let's take off on a bit of a tangent here... In article <1991Jan3.173757.8314@eagle.lerc.nasa.gov> rjlang@falcon.lerc.nasa.gov (Ray Lang) writes: [...stuff deleted about problem with a 3COM (Bridge Comm) bridge...] > We have contacted >3COM two different times about 4 or 5 weeks ago and they hadn't heard of this >happening before and were supposed to get back in touch with us. We are still >waiting. > >Has anyone else had any similar experiences? Hopefully Bridge Communications >(3COM) is subscribed to this. > Wow! You actually TALKED with someone at 3COM about at BC product? What a miracle worker. We've got two remote IB-3s on either end of a short T1 and have had intermittent trouble with them, as in once every 2 or 3 months, it doesn't work at all for about 2 weeks, then it miraculously heals itself. The bridges were purchased and controlled by another agency (yeah, I know, dependent on the crap but don't have control of it, bummer) and I got fed up with them, IMHO, not doing anything about the problem. I bitched enough that they said, OK, you call 'em. And I did. For the uninitiated, you call this 800 number and start entering touch tone codes to get to the right department. A choice comes down, "enter 4 if you would like to speak to a technician regarding a Bridge Communications product now..." or some such. Visions of "NO! I spoke with the last person about it!" "No, I had the last call!" "No you didn't. I had to put up with the complaints last time!" etc. ad nausem. Well, after having been on hold for 45 minutes, I gave up. Called the original agency back and said, it's your babe. Have fun. Right now? 4000+ CRC errors and 4000+ framing errors per day on both ends of a squeaky clean T1 circuit. Gonna replace them with anything but 3COM. Sorry, had to unload this on someone. You drew the short straw. ______________________________________________________________________________ Gary Skaggs - WB5ULK skaggs@nssl.gcn.uoknor.edu DOC/NOAA/ERL/NSSL "I don't mind surprises, as long as I know about them in advance." - Yogi Berra.
gary@sci34hub.sci.com (Gary Heston) (01/04/91)
In article <1991Jan3.173757.8314@eagle.lerc.nasa.gov> rjlang@falcon.lerc.nasa.gov (Ray Lang) writes: > [ .... ] >The problem is, the 3COM bridge intermittently resets itself (reboots). There >are no error conditions or anything out of the ordinary that we can see. We >have replaced the bridge with another 3COM IB/2000 and it still continues. It Is the bridge on a UPS? If not, borrow one and install it for a few weeks. I suspect your problem will vanish. Swapping out the bridge shows that it's either the bridges' firmware, or something external--usually, a power glitch. I have UPSs on my systems, and reliability is very good. They pay for themselves at the first brownout. I can't see any way anything happening on the ethernets could make it reboot. Good luck, Gary -- Gary Heston System Mismanager and technoflunky uunet!sci34hub!gary or My opinions, not theirs. SCI Systems, Inc. gary@sci34hub.sci.com * In Memory of White Sox, the family dog, 1975-1/1/1991. * * Loyal, faithful, and stubborn to the end. We miss him. *
txd@bridge2.ESD.3Com.COM (Tom Dietrich) (01/08/91)
In article <1991Jan3.173757.8314@eagle.lerc.nasa.gov> rjlang@falcon.lerc.nasa.gov (Ray Lang) writes: >I am hoping someone can shed some light on the problem we are having here on >our bridged network. > Config. info. deleted..... > >The problem is, the 3COM bridge intermittently resets itself (reboots). There >are no error conditions or anything out of the ordinary that we can see. We >have replaced the bridge with another 3COM IB/2000 and it still continues. It >will occur several times in a one or two day period, then may not happen again >for a week or so. It may happen any time of the day or night. We have contacted >3COM two different times about 4 or 5 weeks ago and they hadn't heard of this >happening before and were supposed to get back in touch with us. We are still >waiting. > >Has anyone else had any similar experiences? Hopefully Bridge Communications >(3COM) is subscribed to this. > I work for 3Com Tech. Support. I'm answering this in an unofficial capacity. Technical support for 3Com is supplied on a contractual basis. If you'll call back, and reference your incident number, we'll get more specific on your solution. In the event that you don't have one, mention that you had called earlier, and that I had responded to this article. In general, I'd suggest that you prepare to take a memory dump of the failure mode. Refer to the IB/2000 install guide ppg. E-3. Are you running current software (rev. 3.1)? I have not seen this problem in the past, but we'll look into it once we have a little more to go on. Again, give us a call, and we'll work on the problem, I apologize for any difficulties that you have had with our organization. >-- >********************************************************************** >* Ray Lang rjlang@falcon.lerc.nasa.gov * >* NASA Lewis Network Control Center Cleveland, Ohio * >********************************************************************** ********************************************************************* Tom Dietrich, 3Com Technical Support NOTE: The above is a personal response, and not the official position of 3Com Corporation. *********************************************************************
txd@bridge2.ESD.3Com.COM (Tom Dietrich) (01/08/91)
In article <1991Jan4.140428.10849@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu> skaggs@nsslsun.gcn.uoknor.edu (Gary Skaggs) writes: >Let's take off on a bit of a tangent here... > >In article <1991Jan3.173757.8314@eagle.lerc.nasa.gov> rjlang@falcon.lerc.nasa.gov (Ray Lang) writes: >[...stuff deleted about problem with a 3COM (Bridge Comm) bridge...] >> We have contacted >>3COM two different times about 4 or 5 weeks ago and they hadn't heard of this >>happening before and were supposed to get back in touch with us. We are still >>waiting. >> >>Has anyone else had any similar experiences? Hopefully Bridge Communications >>(3COM) is subscribed to this. >> >Wow! You actually TALKED with someone at 3COM about at BC product? What a >miracle worker. We've got two remote IB-3s on either end of a short T1 and >have had intermittent trouble with them, as in once every 2 or 3 months, it >doesn't work at all for about 2 weeks, then it miraculously heals itself. > >The bridges were purchased and controlled by another agency (yeah, I know, >dependent on the crap but don't have control of it, bummer) and I got fed up >with them, IMHO, not doing anything about the problem. > >I bitched enough that they said, OK, you call 'em. > >And I did. > >For the uninitiated, you call this 800 number and start entering touch tone >codes to get to the right department. A choice comes down, "enter 4 if you >would like to speak to a technician regarding a Bridge Communications product >now..." or some such. Visions of "NO! I spoke with the last person about >it!" "No, I had the last call!" "No you didn't. I had to put up with the >complaints last time!" etc. ad nausem. > I work at 3Com's Technical Support center, but this is an UNOFFICIAL, personal response to your article. In response to you, do you have an service account with 3Com? Your visions of how it works here are not anywhere near reality. We *do* ask that the Network Manager (hopefully someone who has an idea of the overall network topology) is the person who calls. The automated phone system does ask you for a service account number. Once that is entered, you are prompted to enter a number, coinciding to what device is giving you a problem. If there is an engineer who is not handling another problem, said engineer's phone will ring. In the event that all of the engineers are busy, you will be sent to the Duty Engineer's queue, and be prompted to leave a message, with a brief description of the problem, so that the case may be handled by an avaliable engineer. The response time is generally less than an hour, even in the worst cases. If you don't have a service account, (as I suspect is the case) you will go to another group, and the response time may be considerably longer. >Well, after having been on hold for 45 minutes, I gave up. Called the >original agency back and said, it's your babe. Have fun. > >Right now? 4000+ CRC errors and 4000+ framing errors per day on both ends of >a squeaky clean T1 circuit. How did you check the error rate? Better yet, how did you determine that your T1 line is "squeaky clean"? > >Gonna replace them with anything but 3COM. > If so, good luck to you. >Sorry, had to unload this on someone. You drew the short straw. >______________________________________________________________________________ >Gary Skaggs - WB5ULK skaggs@nssl.gcn.uoknor.edu DOC/NOAA/ERL/NSSL > > "I don't mind surprises, as long as I know about them in advance." > - Yogi Berra. ******************************************************************** The above is a personal response from Tom Dietrich, and *NOT* an official response from 3Com Corporation. ********************************************************************
mckimg@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (Geoffrey McKim) (01/08/91)
In article <3000@bridge2.ESD.3Com.COM> txd@bridge2.ESD.3Com.COM (Tom Dietrich) writes: > >In response to you, do you have an service account with 3Com? Your >visions of how it works here are not anywhere near reality. We *do* >ask that the Network Manager (hopefully someone who has an idea of the >overall network topology) is the person who calls. > >If you don't have a service account, (as I suspect is the case) you >will go to another group, and the response time may be considerably >longer. > Very few things on the net are more annoying (with the possible exception of flames, for which I beg your forgiveness) than vendor defensiveness. I would hope that the original author of the complaint can be forgiven for not knowing the exact details of 3Com's support structure. In fact, I would hope that 3Com would realize that even having a user get this perception of their support structure is a failure on their part, and that they should work to improve their user-interface, so to speak. Runarounds on the phone are very frustrating as it is, and this is exacerbated by runarounds and endless loops (I've actually gotten into an endless loop with a vendor that will remain nameless) involving touch-tone phone processors, where you can't even speak to a human being. >>Gonna replace them with anything but 3COM. >> OK, 3Com, perfect opportunity to blind the complainer with offers of support -- win him back!! >If so, good luck to you. Buzz. You blew it, guys. Try again next time. I don't mean for this to be a mean-spirited flame...I only mean to express a little of the frustration that many users feel when faced with the daunting task of trying to get deserved support on products that they've paid a lot of money for. And in the case of complaints -- do your best to win the customer back! It may be less fun than making fun of them disagreeing with them, but it doesn't make for as good business. ========================================================================= Geoffrey W. McKim Internet: mckimg@ucs.indiana.edu UCS Networks/LAN Group BITNET: mckimg@iuamber Indiana University Bloomington "I don't speak for IU or any of its 855-4643 organizations or departments" ========================================================================= P.S. for 3Com...what *is* a "service account"? Sure hope it is not something users have to pay for...
lars@spectrum.CMC.COM (Lars Poulsen) (01/08/91)
In article <1991Jan3.173757.8314@eagle.lerc.nasa.gov> rjlang@falcon.lerc.nasa.gov (Ray Lang) writes: >>[...stuff deleted about problem with a 3COM (Bridge Comm) bridge...] >>>We have contacted 3COM two different times about 4 or 5 weeks ago and they >>>... were supposed to get back in touch with us. We are still waiting. In article <1991Jan4.140428.10849@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu> skaggs@nsslsun.gcn.uoknor.edu (Gary Skaggs) writes: >>Wow! You actually TALKED with someone at 3COM about at BC product? What a >>miracle worker. ... >>For the uninitiated, you call this 800 number and start entering touch tone >>codes to get to the right department. A choice comes down, "enter 4 if you >>would like to speak to a technician regarding a Bridge Communications product >>now..." or some such. ... >>Well, after having been on hold for 45 minutes, I gave up. In article <3000@bridge2.ESD.3Com.COM> txd@bridge2.ESD.3Com.COM (Tom Dietrich) writes: >I work at 3Com's Technical Support center, but this is an UNOFFICIAL, >personal response to your article. > >In response to you, do you have an service account with 3Com? Your >visions of how it works here are not anywhere near reality. We *do* >ask that the Network Manager (hopefully someone who has an idea of the >overall network topology) is the person who calls. The automated phone >system does ask you for a service account number. Once that is >entered, you are prompted to enter a number, coinciding to what device >is giving you a problem. If there is an engineer who is not handling >another problem, said engineer's phone will ring. In the event that >all of the engineers are busy, you will be sent to the Duty Engineer's >queue, and be prompted to leave a message, with a brief description of >the problem, so that the case may be handled by an avaliable engineer. >The response time is generally less than an hour, even in the worst >cases. > >If you don't have a service account, (as I suspect is the case) you >will go to another group, and the response time may be considerably >longer. In a previous job, I worked for another data communications vendor, in a customer service group. Our basic service philosophy was that we wanted repeat customers, and we would provide whatever consulting was needed to get our customers running so they would be happy with our gear. Once, we had a customer whose network included a unit with a "Bridge" logo, and for which the documentation was not commensurate with our customer's technical skills. To determine how to configure our equipment, we needed answers to a couple of simple questions about the configurability of the "Bridge" unit. After a half day of chasing around Bay Area directory information for which 3Com group was in charge of the former Bridge product line, I finally located the 3Com tech support number, and its associated voice-mail-from-hell system. After I answered "No" to the question about whether I had a service contract, the system asked me to please have a current MasterCard or visa number ready so they could bill me for the technical support. No MasterCard, no support !!! I called my customer back and related this to him. I also told him that according to my best professional judgement, he should abandon all hope of getting the "Bridge" box to work. He agreed: There was no way he could expect the Federal Government to reimburse him for a charge to his personal credit card which was not travel related. Maybe by now, the tech support number has been moved to the "900" area code ? -- / Lars Poulsen, SMTS Software Engineer CMC Rockwell lars@CMC.COM
skaggs@nsslsun.gcn.uoknor.edu (Gary Skaggs) (01/08/91)
In article <3000@bridge2.ESD.3Com.COM> txd@bridge2.ESD.3Com.COM (Tom Dietrich) writes: >I work at 3Com's Technical Support center, but this is an UNOFFICIAL, >personal response to your article. > >In response to you, do you have an service account with 3Com? Your >visions of how it works here are not anywhere near reality. We *do* >ask that the Network Manager (hopefully someone who has an idea of the >overall network topology) is the person who calls. The automated phone >system does ask you for a service account number. Once that is >entered, you are prompted to enter a number, coinciding to what device >is giving you a problem. If there is an engineer who is not handling >another problem, said engineer's phone will ring. In the event that >all of the engineers are busy, you will be sent to the Duty Engineer's >queue, and be prompted to leave a message, with a brief description of >the problem, so that the case may be handled by an avaliable engineer. >The response time is generally less than an hour, even in the worst >cases. > >If you don't have a service account, (as I suspect is the case) you >will go to another group, and the response time may be considerably >longer. The agency involved does have a service account and I was using all of the necessary account IDs, etc. >>Well, after having been on hold for 45 minutes, I gave up. Called the >>original agency back and said, it's your babe. Have fun. >> >>Right now? 4000+ CRC errors and 4000+ framing errors per day on both ends of >>a squeaky clean T1 circuit. > >How did you check the error rate? Better yet, how did you determine >that your T1 line is "squeaky clean"? This was done by the University of Oklahoma Telecommunications Department and Southwestern Bell. When my 'Bell' man tells me something, I believe him. He has been doing this stuff longer than I've been alive. > >> >>Gonna replace them with anything but 3COM. >> >If so, good luck to you. > >******************************************************************** >The above is a personal response from Tom Dietrich, and *NOT* an >official response from 3Com Corporation. >******************************************************************** Since my diatribe referenced above, I have received two e-mail messages from inside 3Com. They were both very helpful (as opposed to the above) and we will try their fixes today or tomorrow. ______________________________________________________________________________ Gary Skaggs - WB5ULK skaggs@nssl.gcn.uoknor.edu DOC/NOAA/ERL/NSSL "I don't mind surprises, as long as I know about them in advance." - Yogi Berra.