Live Support - Click To Chat

ProAction Partners

Breaking UK Telephony News




General System Programming
Pitfalls Between Remote Site and Managed Ethernet Networks

When connecting MP card, IP-PAD cards or IP telephones to Ethernet switches that support STP, Spanning Tree Protocol (IEEE 802.1d)and LACP, Link Aggregation Control Protocol (IEEE 802.3ad), there is a strong possibility that communications will be disrupted. Ensure that both of these features are deactivated on Ethernet switches.

 

The following are examples of conflict with these features:

IP telephones fail to connect to the PBX.

Calls between IP telephones cannot be made.

Calls between IP telephones and legacy telephones or trunk cannot be made.

With Remote PIM over IP the Remote site does not operate in Normal mode.

 
2000 IPS Remote Site (DM)

The IPS DM (Distributed Module) was introduced in 2003 to solve two problems with the NEC architecture at the time. NEC wanted to add a chassis to their portfolio which brought down the price to invest in an NEC 2000 IPS so as to make it attractive to the SME (Small to Medium Enterprise). It didn't really work, because there wasn't the marketing energy behind the excercise, however it did get a few more systems out there, and allowed organisations who love the Zeacom applications a cheaper entry into the club.

 

Secondly, the IPS DM had a second name - the DMR (Distributed Module Remote). This was aimed as a way of distributing the NEC telephone system over completely different geographic locations and then connecting them together as a single unified PBX (each DMR became a 'Remote Site'). This provided traditional and VoIP telephone services across tens of sites, all converged and managed from one location. It also meant you only needed one Zeacom server, to run voicemail, CTI and call centre at all locations. Finally it provided redundent failovers to the remote sites, in the form of local breakout and backup programming.

 
NEC 2000 IPS and DM System Cards

Both the 10u and 2u chassis accepted the same circuit cards - the DM chassis takes either 5 or 7 cards (sepending on the age of the unit) and the full size system took up to 12 cards. Only certain slots could contain cards which needed wiring out (like extension/line cards) and other cards like Main or Firmware Processors had to site in single unique slots only. If you got it wrong, you could be very liable to destroy the card or the backpane....

 

Most cards are hot swappable and can be done live, taking only a few seconds to come back online. Some cards are considered more 'smart' than others with various systems on-board, like make-busy switches, firmware, and ranges of information LEDs and switches.

 
Direct Dial Inward (DDI) Programming for 2000 IPS

 

Quite a few people have asked us why there isn't a simple GUI tool to do this. The most imporant word of the last sentence was "simple" - because there is a GUI tool for looking up DDI translations, but it's only real use we have found is to look up every possible programmed DDI in the system. It also only appears in some chosen later versions of Matworx.

 

So we'll stick to MOC mode programming in this post.


For those who don't know - DDIs (Direct Dial Inbound) is a single or range of phone numbers which are all on your ISDN circuit. An ISDN2 or ISDN30 circuit can have between 1 and unlimited telephone numbers attributed to it - and when someone dials one of these numbers, BT (or whoever your carrier is) will present the last few digits down the wire to your phone system. It's then up to the phone system to decide what to do with it. In the USA, it's often called DID (direct inward dialling).

 

The NEC 2000 IPS supports between 3 and 4 digits at the end of any DDI for programming. You use a seperate command to tell the system whether it needs to look at the last 3 or 4 digits.

 

Usage - Part 1

 

The first command for DDI programming is 76xx. The xx part of the command is the DDI plan you're looking at - which is 99% of the time DDI plan zero. So let's assume this and use the full command 7600.

 

The FD (first data) for command 7600 is the last few digits of the DDI you wish to look up - lets say for example the DDI 0207 111 1234 is the number we wish to scrutinise. If you had setup the IPS to look at the last four digits, then you'd type 1234 as your FD, if you setup the IPS to look at the last three digits, then you'd type 234 as your FD.

 

The SD (second data) for command 7600 This will read back to you either "NONE" or a 3 digit number. This number is essentially a table reference in between 000 and 999. The table is there inbetween the last bit of programming to give you the flexibility of pointing a DDI to one of four destinations, depending on whether the NEC 2000 IPS phone system is in Day, Night, Mode 1 or Mode 2. I digress!

 

You can change this SD to anything you desire, between 000 and 999 - just be aware that in the next section of this tutorial, we may find the number you chose is already being used. We'll set this to 100.

 

Usage - Part 2

 

The second command for DDI programming is one of four settings - 7601 for when the PBX is in day mode, 7602 for night, 7603 for Mode 1 and 7604 for Mode 2. You will almost always only use Day and Night (if that!).

 

So let's have a look at the Day mode for 100 (set in command 7600).

 

The command is 7601, followed by the FD of 100, which will return a second data of "None" or a number. This final number is the terminating destination of this DDI - it could be an extension, a virtual number, a queue or most things 'internal'. You cannot point a DDI directly to an outside number.

 

Problems / Solutions

 

Probably the biggest complaint with DDI programming in MOC is that there isn't a command to display the information in reverse. Example, if I have an extension 100 and want to know it's DDI, I can't simply look this up quickly. I have to trawl through all the whole table (in 7601,2,3,4 - 1000 numbers, potentially) looking to see if there are any matches.

 

If you're familar with the MACH Script Editor - then you can run a command in to lookup all DDIs which have been assigned. It takes a while but is useful in cutting away all the chaff.

 

There is a GUI for DDI translations in MATworX version 11 or higher.

 

 
Command Line, MOC and CAT Mode

How do I enter commands in MOC? The commands and variables used to program the NEAX 2000 IPS are in Hexadecimal (Machine Code) and will not accept alpha-numeric entries. Don't let this scare you though because most commands remain very simple and don't require any understanding of hex to do! The programming entries are made up of a COMMAND, followed by a FIRST DATA VARIABLE which defines a variable to be set and then a SECOND DATA VARIABLE which will enable, disable or set a features or functions.

 

Command + First Data Variable + Second Data Variable


Entering A Command The Command Manual lists the above structure in the following syntax:

 

ST + CM + DE + First Data Variable + DE + Second Data + EXE


ST is Start Command DE is Data Entry EXE is Execute Command So, for an example from the Command Manual, using this syntax the command will be entered as folows: CM 11 > 000 : 100 "CM" is Start Command, ">" is Data Entry and ":" is Data Entry Extending Commands and Multiple First Data Values Commands can also be extended beyond two Hexadecimal characters which is shown in the Feature Programming and Command Manuals as a y integer. For example, command EC has a  y data of "6"

 

e.g. CM EC6 > 0 : 0


The First Data Variable field may use a comma , to separate multiple values when shown in the Feature Programming and Command Manuals. For example, command: 9000 (90 y = 00) has a first data with a comma seperating the First Data from the extra value: First Data: 2000 Extra Value: 00.

 

e.g. CM 9000 > 2000,00 : 2046

 

Programming Interfaces

There are 2 programming interfaces available:

  1. Customer Administration Terminal (CAT) - Programming from an NEC DTERM phone
  2. Maintenance Administration Terminal (MAT)  A GUI called MATWorX which is available for most Windows-based operating systems.

 

MATWorX offers the following features:

  • Menu Items
  • Command Prompt - MOC (Maintenance Operation Console)
  • Batch / Script Files - MACH (MOC Accelerated Command Heap)
  • Script Editor

 

Entering the Commands in MOC

The commands are entered into MOC using the keyboard Function Keys (F1 to F12) as listed below:

ST is Start Command = F9 (or / )

DE is Data Entry = F8 (or space bar)

EXE is Execute Command = F2 (or . )

CE is Clear Entry = F3

S is Step Forward through Entries = F4

, is Data Seperator = F5

- is Step Backwards through Entries = F6

Backspace to erase a typed character = Backspace or F7

 

So to enter the commands above in MOC, the following sequece would be required:

 

CM 11 > 000 : 100 could be literally interpreted as "F9 11 F8 000 F8 100 F2"

CM EC6 > 0 : 0 could be literally interpreted as "F9 EC6 F8 0 F8 0 F2"

CM 9000 > 2000,00 : 2046 could literally be interpreted as "F9 9000 F8 2000,00 F8 2046 F2"

 
« StartPrev12345678NextEnd »

Page 4 of 8