[AusNOG] Anyone run across any incompatibilities between Telstra's NEC DSLAM's and Cisco ADSL routers?

[Ryan Crouch]

Hi Justin & ausnog,

We've experienced some similar issues with 877's across numerous wholesale
port suppliers (except Telstra) / DSLAM vendors for some customers using
this CPE. Everything would look in spec DSL stats wise and SYNC/Router
would just fall over for absolutely no reason. It just got to the point
that we had checked everything and it was just unexplainable.

We tried IOS upgrades/downgrades, DSLAM port swaps, different filters,
replaced internal cabling and in the end CPE replacement usually fixed it
(but sometimes for only a short period of time). Given the frustration of
seeing a 2 week old 877 getting swapped out one of our customers/partners
opened up the 877's. Inside were swollen and leaking capacitors.

Image Attached: http://www.apexn.com.au/ausnog/877_caps.jpg (2mbytes)

They have since opened a number of 877's up that were showing strange
behaviour and they all had the same cap problem. As a test, caps were
replaced and router stability issues went away.

To be totally honest, it's a pretty scary prospect and while this might
not be the cause of the problem you're experiencing it certainly weighs on
our minds when we start getting unexplained CPE behaviour.


-Ryan

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