[c-nsp] Flakiness w/PA-MC-T3 on 12.2(28)SB4

[Vinny Abello]

Has anyone else experienced reliability problems and general issues with
the PA-MC-T3 in a 7200 series router running 12.2(28)SB4? I see SB5 is
currently out but I haven't yet looked into the changes.

The things I am experiencing are circuits will sometimes show a loop
when there is no loop on the circuit. Rebuilding the channel-group makes
it go away (and no t1 loopback is set on the channel).

I just fixed a T1 on a particular channel that would not come up after
repeated rebuilding of the configuration, and channel on the controller.
The incoming bytes would always remain 0. Outgoing bytes would increase
but that was it. The remote router (after switching it with a Cisco so
we could verify) was showing the packets coming in and packets being
sent out but my input counters never showed the packets arriving. The
odd thing was I could run bert patterns to loops I set on the smart jack
or CSU all day long in either direction from either router and they
would always succeed. Again, rebooting the router with the PA-MC-T3
running 12.2(28)SB4 fixed the problem.

Third thing although this might be a legitimate circuit issue, is the
channelized DS3 connected to the PA-MC-T3 is taking a lot of errors at
sporadic time intervals during the day. Sometimes it's severe enough to
cause loss of connectivity across the T1's. Again, this may actually be
a circuit issue so I have a ticket opened with my vendor but they
haven't been able to locate a problem yet. I'm suspicious now of
possible buggy code in this train for the PA-MC-T3. We've generally
never had issues with this circuit until we upgraded the code to this
train (because of needed features).

Details are as follows:

Cisco IOS Software, 7200 Software (C7200-A3JK91S-M), Version
12.2(28)SB4, RELEAS
E SOFTWARE (fc2)
Technical Support: http://www.cisco.com/techsupport
Copyright (c) 1986-2006 by Cisco Systems, Inc.
Compiled Wed 30-Aug-06 15:03 by richv

ROM: System Bootstrap, Version 12.1(20000710:044039) [nlaw-121E_npeb
117], DEVEL
OPMENT SOFTWARE

 core1.gnp.nyc uptime is 9 minutes
System returned to ROM by reload at 01:33:38 EST Fri Nov 17 2006
System restarted at 01:35:20 EST Fri Nov 17 2006
System image file is "disk0:c7200-a3jk91s-mz.122-28.SB4.bin"


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Cisco 7206VXR (NPE400) processor (revision A) with 491520K/32768K bytes
of memor
y.
Processor board ID 25753668
R7000 CPU at 350Mhz, Implementation 39, Rev 3.2, 256KB L2 Cache
6 slot VXR midplane, Version 2.4

Last reset from power-on

PCI bus mb0_mb1 (Slots 0, 1, 3 and 5) has a capacity of 600 bandwidth
points.
Current configuration on bus mb0_mb1 has a total of 490 bandwidth points.
This configuration is within the PCI bus capacity and is supported.

PCI bus mb2 (Slots 2, 4, 6) has a capacity of 600 bandwidth points.
Current configuration on bus mb2 has a total of 270 bandwidth points
This configuration is within the PCI bus capacity and is supported.

Please refer to the following document "Cisco 7200 Series Port
Adaptor Hardware Configuration Guidelines" on CCO <www.cisco.com>,
for c7200 bandwidth points oversubscription/usage guidelines.


2 FastEthernet interfaces
30 Serial interfaces
1 ATM interface
1 Channelized T3 port
125K bytes of NVRAM.

253512K bytes of ATA PCMCIA card at slot 0 (Sector size 512 bytes).
253512K bytes of ATA PCMCIA card at slot 1 (Sector size 512 bytes).
4096K bytes of Flash internal SIMM (Sector size 256K).
Configuration register is 0x2102


Slot 2:
        CT3 single wide Port adapter, 1 port
        Port adapter is analyzed
        Port adapter insertion time 00:15:57 ago
        EEPROM contents at hardware discovery:
        Hardware revision 1.0           Board revision A0
        Serial number     16786338      Part number    73-3037-01
        FRU Part Number:  PA-MC-T3= (SW)

        Test history      0x0           RMA number     00-00-00
        EEPROM format version 1
        EEPROM contents (hex):
          0x20: 01 A0 01 00 01 00 23 A2 49 0B DD 01 00 00 00 00
          0x30: 50 00 00 00 00 04 21 00 FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF


-- 

Vinny Abello
Network Engineer
Server Management
vinny at tellurian.com
(973)300-9211 x 125
(973)940-6125 (Direct)
PGP Key Fingerprint: 3BC5 9A48 FC78 03D3 82E0  E935 5325 FBCB 0100 977A

Tellurian Networks - The Ultimate Internet Connection
http://www.tellurian.com (888)TELLURIAN

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