Rant about the nbx 100

Warning! If you have an NBX go down at night and your local support people don't do 24 hr support you CAN NOT get support the US tech support line.

Randmon details about the nbx

NBX version 3_0_13 has disk mirroring in software. This "feature" is only turned on with a license key for the NBX super stacker product. I am highly offended that this feature that adds reliability isn't on by default for all systems. I'm in Australia and I have a serious question about 3com's duty of care if the product has protection aginst disk crash but they refuse to activate it for marketing reasons. I believe this practice in a phone system (that could be used to make emergency calls) is illegal in Australia. According to Australian law, if I have another disk crash and this software isn't working, we have a legal calim aginst 3com. You can bet I'll take the option.

The old story:

At work I was attempting to buy a new phone system. All I need is about 32 phones with modern features. Most of the old BAPX systems providers are going under so I was looking at the new IP based systems. The options I can get in Australia are the 3Com NBX 100 and the Cisco call manager based system. Based on past history, I would choose the cisco solution since they have a great reputation for solid software but they decided to risk all that and run Call Manager only under Windows and Blowing their reputation forever.

So I start looking at the #2 solution and while looking for tech support on the web I find that 3Com has absolutely no tech support info about the NBX on any of their web sites. What kind of networking company are they if they can't even use the web themselves.

Update I decided on the 3Com NBX 100 anyway. We ordered it and it arrived 4 days latter. Because I wasn't happy with the whole situation, I held back and only ordered a base system of the main unit and 4 phones and a few line cards. For some reason the Analog terminal card will be a few weeks late. I plugged in the ISDN card but the system didn't see it. I find out that we need 2_8_8 of the software to run that and system came with 2_6 and there was no web site to download the current version. A call to the sales guy at Plestel and he said a tech would call me back in 1/2 hr. I get a call from the tech and he has the new software but its not online and considers emailing me the 30mb image but only has a 56k dialup line so he offers to burn a CD and I pick it up Monday and it was already after 6:00pm.

I run the network at work. I've run networks before and I buy quite a bit of gear and if this product is a "convergence product", I expect it to be supported like a network product. I want to be able to pick up the phone and talk to someone if it dies and if I need the current version of the software, I expect to be able to download it from somewhere.

Since I had all weekend with a non operational phone system, I started looking at it a bit closer. The NBX 100 appears to be bread box sized rack mount case that has several cards that let you plug in stuff. From the network point of view, it looks like a single device at the end of a primitive 10mb 1/2 duplex Ethernet connection. Inside there is a different story. Each "channel" is its own device so the 4 port ISDN card is in fact 4 Ethernet devices that hang off of network inside the box. Its design shows much in common with some of the smart network devices concepts coming out of MIT. It uses vxWorks as its core operating system as well as the operating system from some of the add in cards. The system also makes use of existing solid technology such as the University of Washington's IMAP tool kit which means it uses solid, tested code and not something scraped up under a time deadline that is almost compatible. The NBX 100 shows both its MIT heritage and its design age. The device has 10base2 coax connectors. I haven't seen that on a new bit of gear in a long time. I would be surprised if anyone ever used it. Maybe 3com could save a bit of cash by not putting that expensive connector on the board.

I could recomend the nbx if they fixed a few thigns:

• Dump the 10mb interface. In the days of gigabyte ehternet, why 10mb?
• Provided decent online support.
• published how to talk to the device for non-Windows users.
• Use syslog so I can log details to my sylog servers.
• There is no caller id history log on the phones.
• The Australian Language pack is British press naught for an operator :-( (Our deailer has edited the file and fixed this. Thanks!)
• There is no way to monitor voice mail useage from the web page. (there is a hidden web page)
• There is no way to change the "administrator" password and if if the device is on the Internet, it becomes trival to crack the password. A standard dictionary attack should take less than 8 hours. (update, 20 minutes)

• It can't get the time off the network (a hidden in Rev R4 to use ntp thats broken)
• It doesn't know about DST south of the equator or even our timezone.
• you have to talk to vxworks programs to get some info out of it.
  at the nbx100-> prompt on the serial port, type vmStats
  lkup "" gives you a list of all commands and many of the won't work or could break your system real bad.
• It would be nice to download .wav files to the phone as its ringer. The default 9 are all bad.
• The trasnfer is blind. The callee has no idea when the call ahs been transfered. They should add a beep.
• There is no "answer" page feature
• The device can't generate a busy signal (this was fixed on rev 4)
• The device will answer a call and then provide a fake ring so that the caller doesn't know if they are paying toll charges or not.
• Parts of the code will drop leading 0s which results in a loss of importaint info for most parts of the world
• The long distance pre selection codes show up in the logs and on the screen with the "dialed" number
• you have to hit way too many buttons for the system speed dial
• the real documentation (if there is any) is reserved for dealers
• There is no way to hook up their 100mb phones in a way that won't degrade the cat5 rating on the cabe thanks to an excessively tight bending radius.
• the device is NOT VoIP unless you pay extra!

Just as soon as I have more time, I'll put together a few apps that run under unix to do the call reporting and TAPI like things. If you want a real Aussie language pack, let me know since I suspect we are going to have to rerecord everything.

The ONLY online tech support I can find is here at the NBX Group

Useful links
• Using a VPN to a home office