Advantages of CSU WICs?

[jlazzaro]

Besides the obvious space savings, what are the advantages of running a WIC card with a built in CSU over an external unit?

All of our old, remote sites still run external CSU's with Serial WIC cards. Verizon provides the CSU and swaps them out if theres ever any problem. If there was an issue, we would have to send a new card out which would at least a day or two as opposed to them just taking care of it.

Are there added commands / diagnostics / tools with these cards? TIA!

 

[spidey07]

External CSUs are actually more powerfull/have more features.

The internal ones are just so much easier. Plus remote management is more simple as well. Just one modem/one phone line and you have access to the router and the CSU. You can do this with an external CSU as well but it gets complicated.

 

[jlazzaro]

i see. we literally have an entire rack of CSUs, plus all the serial cabling and converters...its overwhelming and close to impossible to trace an interface.

i may look into the wic-csu for our hub site, but for troubleshooting purposes the remote sites will probobly stay that way. thanks for the info~!

 

[spidey07]

You could move all those to an internal DS3 card and just have one physical interface. There's no need to have a bank of CSUs anymore.
😉

 

[cmetz]

jlazzaro, the internal ones give you fewer things to go wrong and/or be misconfigured.

 

[Cooky]

Did you say Verizon provides the external CSU's?
I had thought that in the US, customers have to get their own CSU...

 

[jlazzaro]

Originally posted by: Cooky
Did you say Verizon provides the external CSU's?
I had thought that in the US, customers have to get their own CSU...

we've never paid them for any of the CSUs...maybe its part of the FTS contract between the government and Verizon? not my department!

 

[cmetz]

Cooky, I believe that telcos are forbidden from requiring you to get the CSU from them, similar to the deal with NT1s. That doesn't mean they can't give you one as part of the deal, as long as there's a way to also get a deal with no CSU. In practice, many terms are negotiable and things like CSUs can be cheap enough to the telco to be giveaways.

 

[Garion]

One less thing to break, one less cable to pull out accidentally, one less device to have to support, one less vendor to deal with, one less thing to go on the shelf, one less power brick to plug in, etc. One less service contract to pay for.

Add this up for all of your sites and the WIC's EASILY pay for themselves.

- G