jsol@bu-cs.bu.edu (06/28/89)
It's much more common with DMS switching to be overloaded. I haven't seen an ESS in overloaded state, and I know for sure NET has some pretty loaded CO's (although I haven't seen NYC's phone service, I'll bet they are FAR worse off). Newton MA has a DMS1000 and they have the MF (not touchtone) tones distributed across the call before it is completed. Also, DMS equipment is far flakier than ESS so watch out for it. You can't easily distinguish between a DMS and an ESS 5. They are largely the same technology (hooray for competetion). You pick up the phone, sometimes you hear clicks and sometimes you don't. I think with ESS5 you always hear clicks, so if you don't get a click or two before your "goooooooooooo" (dialtone), then you are probably on a small DMS office. ESSen crash. They definitely crash. I've tried relentlessly to get access to the other switch in my CO, and now I have finally gotten a line on it. Unfortunately this other CO loses it's OE's all the time, so I don't get any better service by having lines on both CO's. I like ESS5 and ESS1[A] as well, I don't like DMS. I would probably get a FEX if I lived in a DMS area, just so I can have reliable phone service. The Cambridge ESS1 is converting to ESS5. I can't wait! Oh, the main reason why ESS has so many bugs in it now is that the BOC's are hiring programmers to work on it, where before, the coding was done by PHD's at ATT Bell Labs. You figure it out...... --jsol
julian%bongo.uucp@eecs.nwu.edu (julian macassey) (07/02/89)
In article <telecom-v09i0219m07@vector.dallas.tx.us>, jsol@bu-cs.bu.edu writes: > > You can't easily distinguish between a DMS and an ESS 5. They are > largely the same technology (hooray for competetion). You pick up the > phone, sometimes you hear clicks and sometimes you don't. I think with > ESS5 you always hear clicks, so if you don't get a click or two before > your "goooooooooooo" (dialtone), then you are probably on a small DMS > office. > --jsol Here is a way to spot a DMS. Using a Touch Tone phone, get dialtone and dial one digit. Immediately after you take your finger off the dial pad, you will hear a very short burst of dialtone before silence. This means the switch is a DMS. Certainly works in Southern California. So the sequence is: Dialtone, Touch Tone, dialtone, silence. A X-Bar or AT&T ESS will have the following sequence: Dialtone, Touch Tone, silence. There are of course other quirks that identify a DMS, but this is a quick, certain, cheap and dirty test. Yours -- Julian Macassey, n6are julian@bongo ucla-an!denwa!bongo!julian n6are@k6iyk (Packet Radio) n6are.ampr.org [44.16.0.81] voice (213) 653-4495