I hate stories with sad endings, and my saga of getting ISDN up and running at a Boston hospital is a sad tale indeed: after almost two months of trying various configurations, John Lightfoot, the network manager at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and I couldn't get it running. We tried everything we could think of: putting a new card in a new PC, bringing in all sorts of debugging software, and calling on the best brains of both Digiboard and Nynex. But in the end, we could only get one half of the scenario running: the machine and line at the hospital side were fine. But the connection at John's home just wouldn't work. Actually, we were frustrated because we could see that the machine at his house was sending, but not receiving, any packets over the link. You would think if we had configured the darn thing wrong (easy enough to do, considering the numerous parameters that need setting by both Nynex and in the Digiboard software, and that they have to match quite carefully) we wouldn't have gotten this far. The problem is that you are quite literally at the mercy of your local phone company, and I kept having visions of Ernestine flashing through my mind every time we called Nynex to track something down. I still remember when we called and they said they lost the conditioning information for John's home line -- pretty cheesy if you ask me. I know I am not alone in my frustrations over ISDN -- our esteemed editor-in-chief has chronicled his own problems with getting his setup working, and in the supposedly-enlightened service area of Pacific Bell. It shouldn't be this hard to get this technology going. So here are a few pointers for those of you that are about to attempt an ISDN installation on your own: -- First off, order two ISDN lines for your office as a test bed to get started. This way you can test an end-to-end solution when the machines are side-by-side, and get familiar with the whole setup and configuration process in the comfort of your own office. We spent so much time dragging equipment from home to office and back again to home, and of course we were always in the wrong place when it came time to test one side of the link or another. -- Second, when it comes time to try your first remote ISDN connection, make sure the lines are conditioned the same and try to find a remote site that uses the same telephone switch vendor that you use at the office site. We were testing AT&T equipment at the hospital, and had a Northern Telecom switch at John's home. That took some doing to deal with. This business of line conditioning -- the process of specifying the zillion parameters that configure an ISDN line -- has got me in a lather. I know the reason for it but can't we make the process simplier? Intel tried with its various color-coding, but some of the phone companies are still color-blind. So the moral of this story is make sure you pick out your ISDN product before you call the phone company to order the line. Doing it the other way is a guarantee for lots of pain. -- Third, decide whether you want the product to function more like a modem or a network card, and then re-evaluate your decision after you've gotten down the road. Digiboard's ISDN card is more like a network adapter than a modem, and yet for the application that we were using (remote access of the hospital network), we might have been better off with something that looked more like a modem. In addition, the network OS vendors could help things along here by including drivers for ISDN cards as part of their driver set when they release a new version of the OS. What a concept! But if we are going to start thinking of ISDN as a mainstream LAN connectivity option, Novell and Microsoft and Banyan have to take the first step. -- Fourth, wait for those products that incorporate NT-1s. Having to purchase a separate adapter that is not much more than an overpriced plug between your ISDN card and the wall socket is ridiculous, and I'm glad to see the various vendors moving in the direction of incorporating NT-1s into their products. This also makes debugging easier, since you have just eliminated another vendor to call when you have problems. Digiboard and others should be shipping these integrated products by the time you read this. --Finally, find someone at the phone company that you can trust, that has done lots of ISDN installations, that knows what he or she is talking about, and that you can call for support. This is probably the biggest hurdle to overcome, and for those readers that have hit this wall already, I suggest clipping this column and sending it in to the president of your phone company with this section circled. It is time we got the kind of service from the local phone company that we require from any other important partner in our computing applications. This means everything from better-staffed technical support lines to web servers with real information to a presence on Compuserve. Some of them, most notably Pac Bell, have begun to move in this direction, but for the most part they are still back in the dark ages. But this also is a two-way street with the phone companies: we have to start cultivating the relationship and letting them know who in our corporate domain holds the keys to our data kingdoms. So it may be time to take your phone co. rep out to lunch and start to make these inroads. So even though we labored greatly to get ISDN working and failed, I think there are lots of lessons for both you and the vendors in this nascent industry. And I look forward to the day when the obstacles mentioned above are resolved to make this important technology much easier to work with.
Click here to return to the
previous
page
David Strom
Port Washington, NY 11050 USA
US TEL: 1 (516) 944-3407