(ASCEND) TNT: "radius client timeout" -> bad modems!

[Joe Pautler <pautler@grasshopper.cit.buffalo.edu>]

I just went through a very strange problem here, so I figured I'd
post it to the list to perhaps help someone else out in the future...

I am running a TNT multi-chassis environment, on version 7.2.3.
I am using a t3-card, 4ether2-card, some 48modem-56k-cards, and
some csmx-cards.

The help desk started getting a lot of calls from users who
connections were being "immediately dropped for no reason".

I started poking around and found a ton of "Radius client timeout for user
xxxx" messages in my syslog file.  Most of them were also
accompanied with "LAN security error for user xxxxx" messages.

I then started trouble-shooting what I though was some sort of radius
problem.  After various poking and prodding, I noticed that I had
some error messages in my log such as:

Mar  7 10:28:23 tnt200-79.dialin.buffalo.edu 1/17: WARNING  Index: 179  Revision
: 7.2.3  Slot 3/4  (tntcsmx)  Location:  e00acce4 e00ad8d0 e00ac440 e0108628 e01
0cff4 e010d514 
Mar  7 10:31:47 tnt200-79.dialin.buffalo.edu 1/17: WARNING  Index: 179  Revision
: 7.2.3  Slot 3/6  (tntcsmx)  Location:  e00acce4 e00ad8d0 e00ac440 e0108628 e01
0d460 e010d504 

I then noticed that these two csmx cards did not have any authenticated
users connected to them... they had some calls connected, but none
authenticated.  Also, all of the radius timeout messages that I
was seeing in my syslog file were coming from those two cards.

I popped out the two cards, and the error messages immediately stopped.
I re-installed one of the cards (in different slots even), and the error
messages would pick right back up again.

I'm still not sure how or why a bad modem card would result in this sort
of behavior, but none-the-less, that's what we've experienced here.

By the way, is there currently any up-to-date archive of this mailing
list?  www.nexial.com/mailinglists/ only seems to have archives up
until 1998, and www.support.nl/online/ascend.html has been broken
for a while.  If there isn't any up-to-date archive, I (and I'm
sure many others) would be greatly appreciative to anyone who would 
be willing to set one up.  :)

___________________________________________________________________________
Joe Pautler, E.I.T.                             University at Buffalo
CIT/OSS Network Engineering                     224 Computing Center
http://www.oss.buffalo.edu/~pautler             (716) 645-3536

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