Ascend Archive
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Re: (ASCEND) stuck in restricted mode
John Coy (anc.net) said:
>I was trying to upgrade to firmware v7.0.1 (from 5.0Ap51).
>I loaded the restricted load rtk.m40, rebooted, and then
>loaded the fat load ftk.m40 -- unfortunately, when I rebooted
>the second time, the system is stuck in restricted mode.
>
>Is there something else I need to do?
Yes, just re-load, and re-load and keeping trying
until it "takes".
If that does not work, I'd suggest loading (and
subsequently re-loading) a Glock 9mm, and firing
it repeatedly into the power supply area of the
Max. :)
Voodo dolls, crystals, and healing herbs may also be of
help. I have ordered all of the above as standard-issue
toolkit components for all my field techs and NOC staff
who must work with Ascend gear. As for upgrade instructions,
I would suggest a 27-sided die and a "Dungeons and Dragons"
adventure game book as a navigation aid when wading through
the Ascend web site and release notes.
I recently went through a similar upgrade process documented
in a prior contribution to this list, and I have thus lost
all faith in the ability of Ascend to package their constant
barrage of obscure "new features" into code that remains
stable in regard to existing features and thus meets basic
specifications of RFPs issued at time of purchase.
It seems obvious to me that my people were putting up with
this for some time, and only escalating to me the "big
problems". I will never make the error again of delegating
without "trying it myself" first. First-hand knowledge of
Ascend's actual upgrade process shows that it is IMPOSSIBLE
to upgrade a Max in a remote location from the NOC in any
sort of calm and predictable manner during our normal
"maintenance window" of 3am - 6am local time.
As an aside, if you were trying to load the "fat"
load over the serial port, forget it. You MUST load
the "fat" load via TFTP. If you have a terminal
emulator with "scroll-back", you will see that even
though the "fat" load loads without error, the Max
will have a CRC error when "expanding" the load.
The punch line was that Ascend never even bothered to
REPLY to my list of problems found, even though I copied
it to support@ascend.com. Not even an automated reply
with a ticket number. This seems to indicate that
support@ascend.com is FILTERING OUT e-mail with the
(ASCEND) tag in the Subject: line, and is hence,
deliberately ignoring this list, even when one writes
to both the list and support. The message here is simple.
Ask your question to BOTH this list and Ascend support,
and you get ignored by Ascend as (punishment?) for taking
your problem "public".
From a realistic point of view, the Max 4xxx line
is a lame-duck product anyway. Even our "local" field
sales office (a mere 5 hours drive away) admits that
there will be no new revisions beyond 7.0.x for the Max
4xxx, and the product will be placed in "maintenance mode".
Don't even talk to me about the Pipeline 130. Pipelines
and their ability to recover from a frame-relay fractional
(or full) T-1 line glitch without a manual power-cycle have
cost me a friendship that lasted decades with a Sprint/Centel
field tech supervisor.
This is a darned shame. The Max 6xxx is a much more expensive
product, but really is nothing more than a product that meets
Ascend's promises made about the 4xxx series. Bottom line,
the combination of even 3 PRIs, OSFP, and stacking has caused
problems with the 4xxx that have never been fixed to the
satisfaction of the members of this list. More esoteric
combinations of features were even more problematic, and
multiple revisions simply did not fix these problems.
This leaves a "hole" in the market for us, since a PM3 is
really a Max 4048 equivalent, and the PM4 is a Max TNT
equivalent.
Where is a reasonably-priced 4-PRI box for applications
that do not include "Voice Over IP"? (We are not insane
enough to trust Ascend to add yet more features on top
of a platform with outstanding unresolved problems in
basic "bread and butter" functionality, and we are looking
at dedicated facilities to support VoIP.)
The "promo" on the Max 6048 may seem nice, but it still
is more expensive than the (Solunet) price of 2 PM3s with
the add-on "backhaul" T-1 cards.
I just signed a PO for two PM3s, since we needed more
RASes installed before Christmas, and Ascend is not going
to charge me more for product that merely adds the
performance required to >>really do<< what the first
Ascend Max we purchased was supposed to be able to do.
I suppose that the Ascend sales rep will call and try to
"sell" me on the Max 6000, but in the past year alone this
same rep made two different appointments to meet with us
(for the first time ever), and broke both appointments
without even a phone call to tell is he had to cancel.
With no-show product hardware, no-show stable releases, and
a no-show sales team, Lucent/Livingston and Cisco look much
better than they did a few years ago. They have had a few
years to get their act together, while Ascend has wasted
the time with random thrashing.
Ascend is no longer an approved vendor here. If Ascend wants
to change that, we await the first-ever visit from any Ascend
employee. We will expect any such employee to explain why
the Ascend logo is worth paying a premium above the competition's
products.
At Christmas, we all admire a dead tree and eat candy from old socks
james fischer jfischer@supercollider.com
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