Trial dialin numbers

Note: this trial has been extended indefinitely and is still currently active.

For a short while, at least through the end of September 1999, we are making some trial dialin numbers available in order to evaluate new dialin equipment at our facility -- this in order to give you a choice of equipment, one of which may work better with your modem than the other. Since there are a lot of different kinds of modems being made and sold in the market, implemented with a variety of chipsets, it is reasonable to assume that different modems may perform differently when calling different kinds of remote access equipment equipment at the ISP end.

As you probably know, our BNH numbers are handled by Lucent PM3 access servers. These PM3s use Lucent modem chipsets. We are currently evaluating some new equipment that uses Rockwell modem chipsets. What we are trying to see is whether providing both Lucent and Rockwell based servers will offer a better choice for our customers, allowing you to dial into the one that gives you better results. We may find that it doesn't, we may find that it does; this is what we're looking to find out.

The new equipment is on a new number: nxx-6388, where "nxx" is any of the BNH exchanges (e.g. as listed on the Access Numbers page. If you are already using a BNH number ending in -6387, just add 1 to that number (the new number will end in -6388).

There are some caveats:

• The new equipment does not support STAC compression. (If you don't know if this matters, it probably doesn't; you would only be using it deliberately).

• The new numbers support IP account logins only. If you are using PPP with the PAP protocol to supply your login information (again, most of you are, you probably would be doing it differently only deliberately), then you should simply be able to switch to the new number and connect. Some of you may be using login scripts; these should also work UNLESS your script is trying to learn your IP address my analyzing the script dialog - if you have such a script, you may need to modify it to use this new number.

• There are a limited number of ports on the new equipment (23 ports at present). We doubt they will fill up during the evaluation period, but this is something to be aware of. This is not a long-term limitation.

• Please remember that this is for evaluation, and the number may go away if we decide the evaluation fails (or we may try something else).

• If you are getting good results now, there's probably no reason to switch to this unit. If you try it out and don't get an improvement, please return to what you were using before.

• The new equipment is not yet configured to support Data over Voice ISDN (but will be soon, I'll post a followup when it is).

If you try this number and experience different results than you were formerly getting (either worse or better!) please send us feedback; we really need the information in order to evaluation the trial.

Send feedback by emailing to Mark Mallett at mem@admin.mv.net or by posting to the mv.forum.general newsgroup.