We have two ONSes that we are attempting to connect to a ring provided by a major carrier (that employs 7 ONSes running 4-pair BLSR OC-192) They are handing off three OC-48 circuits to us to transport data/voice between our corporate site and an off-site data center (located about 50 miles away).
The purpose for our ONSes is to allow me to provision new circuits on the fly between the two sites. So if someone needs a new GIG-E connection between sites, or a DS3 or whatever, I just throw it in the ONS and off they go.
Anyhow, the issue is this. They have provisioned STS-48c circuits that they hand off to me. The physical links between ours and their ONSes come up just fine.
The first issue that I had to overcome was to teach the carrier’s tech how to create a DCC Tunnel so that my ONSes would see each other without seeing the carrier's network.
(Of course we didn't want to do SDCC with them). As soon as he provisioned the
overhead circuits between the OC-48 ports my ONSes could see each other just fine.
Once they were communicating, I attempted to create an STS-12c circuit to connect two GIG-E ports across. The circuit creation was successful, but the GIG-E ports showed TPTFAIL, and the carrier’s ONS reported LOP-P, and of course no data would transfer. I troubleshot my GIG-E links with loop-back mode and determined they were clean.
So I then nuked the 12c circuit and built a full 48c circuit to connect the GIG-E ports. Lo and behold, the circuit came up just fine! The network devices (6513’s) attached to the GIG-E ports could communicate perfectly.
I then nuked this circuit and tried to go back down to a 24c, 12c, and 3c, all to no avail. It appears that the carrier’s configuration of their OC48 that they are dropping to us will ONLY allow a full STS-48c circuit to be created between my ONSes.
Obviously this is useless, and I want to be able to create small circuits to run voice and data across on demand. What's the point of burning an entire 2.4Gbps STS-48c on a GIG-E connection that can only do ~800Mbps max?
In talking to the carrier tech, he says that they will have to match circuit for circuit those that I provision on my side. I don't believe this since I don't feel the tech has depth of knowledge on the ONS and I talked to our Cisco SE who communicated with the ONS TME and he ensures me that this is not the case, that there is a proper configuration that the carrier can build to allow me to be able to perform dynamic circuit creation.
The TME was not willing to talk directly to me and wants the carrier to go up their chain
for help. (Understandable.)
I've contacted TAC about the issue, but Level 1 doesn’t have much to say on this one. They don’t even have any documentation to refer me to.
Their only suggestion is to ask the carrier to provision 48 STS-1 circuits between the OC-48 cards. They hope that doing this will allow me to create whatever circuits I want on the fly.
Does this sound like the correct method to anyone?
I am anxious to get this circuit up and want to help the carrier figure out how to set it up correctly. (On a side note, we have two different ONSes that we hook to an OC-48 from a different carrier that works perfectly (but they use Lucent equipment in the middle), so I know it can be done.)
Anyone?
Thanks!
