Re: Bug or feature? (was Re: (ASCEND) Doing CLID with 7.0.0 (possible ?))

["Oliver J. Albrecht" <oj@nexus.flensbone.net>]

Hi,

In article <a07a3a826129@news.allcon.net> you wrote:

>> AFAIK, Ascend planned to change the effects of this switch in
>> that direction, which you see now. The philosophy seems to be "NACK means
>> NACK". So if you get the CLID from an incoming user and there is no
>> profile for this number - there is no chance for the user to log in.

>This is nonsense. It breaks the NAS for probably every second ISP in
>the world. Please remember that ISDN is still a european and especially
>german domain, IIRC Germany has 30% of all ISDN endpoints worldwide.
>Ignoring this market by breaking such _basic_ functionality almost
>every ISP here is using daily and is requiring for proper operations
>is beyond stupidity.

Unfortunately what Marc wrote is true. I received a call from someone
with Ascend last week, describing the exact cause that led to this "bug". 
Apparently the feature itself (ID Auth=Prefer) is based on a customer 
request that dates back many releases. The way ID Auth=Prefer was done
never really met the customers requirements, so someone decided to
do it "right" in the latest releases. The way I understand it, is that
the people who changed the feature were not aware of the way it is 
currently being used by many ISP's across  Europe.

>BTW, when did they announce this change in the philosophy ? I can't
>remember reading anything about that in the release notes for 7.0b7.
>Nor before.

Not announcing this change was the most unfortunate part, IMHO. This
has  annoyed me for quite some time. Things get changed and/or
fixed over time, however they are never documented in the release 
notes. Even more annoying are the bugs that never get fixed at all 
like broken call filter handling in 6.0.X Pipeline releases (idle
timers aren't reset), LQM in 6.1.X (anyone tried it in 7.0?) etc..

>> Therefore, I expect that Ascend says: Works as (new) designed.

>If they do _that_ it would be the final step that goes too far.

Actually it should probably say "works as originally designed".

>I would start bashing them to hell, because I had to replace all our
>NASes with other vendors products in order to continue business, or
>stay stuck with a buggy software. But I don't expect them to be really
>that silly, they just broke it in 7.0b7 (I even wrote about this
>problem here on the list when we saw it) and released it in 7.0.0
>(seems I _should_ have done a TR, finally - but then again, who pays
>me for doing so). They will fix it. Or go down the drain in ISDN-Land.

Of course they will fix it, that is reimplement the "lost" feature. I was 
told that an interim version would be made available to those ISP's who 
need it most and I'm quite sure the feature itself will appear again in 
the next release. 

-- 
Oliver J. Albrecht <oj@nexus.flensbone.net>
++ Ascend Users Mailing List ++
To unsubscribe:	send unsubscribe to ascend-users-request@bungi.com
To get FAQ'd:	<http://www.nealis.net/ascend/faq>