Alright so we have a site that needed 6 fax lines, which does not entirely seem to support the installation of a gateway. So we put in 6 ATA 186's and to give you my experiance with them bluntly: These are the single most ^%
@^@ up #
@^@ PoS
@^@$^#@ devices that I have ever had to deal with.
They have frequently stopped sending dial tone to the Fax's they are connected to. When this happens, My usual rounds of troubleshooting occur. Such as:
Is the line physically capable of sending dial tone? (Plug line into a working ATA at the moment). Dial Tone. That answers that.
Is the ATA sending dial tone? (Plug ATA into a analog phone). No Dial Tone.
So the problem is with the ATA. -Resets- No Change. -Power Cycle- No Change. -Deletes and copies a WORKING config of an ATA- No Change.
Okay so maybe the ATA is flakey. -Replaces with brand new ATA- Still no dial tone. Son-of-a...
Okay, so its a configuration thing right? It has to be. So I replace it with the other ATA, and just when I'm about to give up hope looking for the problem in the config, it gives dial tone to the fax machine with, guess what, NO CHANGE.
So now with another phone call of things not working right with fax machines I'm pretty sure I'm about to devour a small child in an attempt to summon the demon lords so that they can get their freaking heads out of my analog conversions!
Anyone experienced this? What in the world am I missing? It has to be a configuration thing... but I'm not sure where. When the ATA's do not send dial tone, the call gets a ring no answer.
