asterisk users - Sep 2005 - "Provisioned, Down, Active", but D-channel seems to be fine

Hi,

I'm seeing rather odd behaviour on a new box with TE110P card.

I'm running the TE110P span with ccs,hdb3,crc4 in pri_net, connected to a 
second machine with a TE410P in pri_cpe.

The span is idle.

I'm using pri intense debug span 1 and can see the RRs going back and 
forth.

So - things are running along with the span showing "Provisioned, Up, 
Active" in pri show span 1.

Something happens and the span logs an alarm, and goes down.  All the 
channels go down.

Almost immediately, the alarm clears.  I see the RRs again.

But, pri show span 1 shows the span now as "Provisioned, Down,
Active".

But all along we are exchanging RRs (receive ready) with the remote 
system.

So I'm pretty sure that the span is actually up again.  But why doesn't 
Asterisk agree...?

(Actually, I suspect that at the level of the D-channel it didn't really
go down, we just had a tiny layer-1 glitch).

Looking in the chan_zap code around line 8000, I see that when it gets an 
ALARM from zaptel is clears the DCHAN_UP flag.  But I don't understand the 
process by which the DCHAN_UP gets set to yes again.

Any comments or pointers?

Steve

steve@daviesfam.org wrote:
> But, pri show span 1 shows the span now as "Provisioned, Down,
Active".
> 
> But all along we are exchanging RRs (receive ready) with the remote 
> system.
The telco has turned your circuit 'administratively down' so their 
operator console would stop getting spammed with 'PRI down' errors.

Preparing to order a T1 (not PRI) for our asterisk box. The telco has 
offered me several options that I am not sure of. Which would be best 
for use with asterisk? The box has the Digium card in it, BTW.

1. Dial Tone - No, Yes - Precise, Yes - SCC
2. Framing - SF, ESF
3. Line Coding - AMI, B8ZS
4. Signaling Type - Ground Start, E&M, Loop Start w/Ring, Loop Start w/o
Ring
5. Pulse Mode - DTMF, MF
6. Outpulse Start - Wink, Immediate, Seizure
7. If Seizure then - Origination, Digit Collection.


On a related note, am I correct that the only major differences with a 
PRI are faster call setup time and the caller ID information on the D 
channel? Are there any significant differences in sound quality with a 
PRI? Any other advantages to giving up the extra channel seeing as the 
cller ID is not really a selling point for me?

Thanks

BEN