Crackling on phone line?

[portlandian]

I was told about this a couple weeks ago, and it seems to happen during heavy traffic usage, and I just got the following in an email today, "We are having some serious issues with our phone lines today, we are getting calls breaking up on nearly every line".

I would like advice here on what I should do as I'm pretty novice.  Is there anywhere I can test/diagnose the source of this problem? Should I have higher up tech support look into it?

Also, can this sort of problem be from poor network topology? I'm no genius but iirc we have about 20 people in this one bldg with a 10/100 network using mitel phones and what should be light internet.

Thanks for any and all advice!

[akuhn]

Questions beget questions.  Are these phones connected via ethernet or digital?  I ask because mine are digital, but it seems to be fairly rare these days.

If via ethernet, are the desktop PCs plugged into the phones for passthrough, or do the phones and PC's each have their own separate connection?

Are the voice and data networks separate within your office?  IE are they vlan'd?

Finally, is your office's connection to the internet both for voice and data? 

The last question is probably the most important one.  Because then you can call the carrier and check to make sure there are no service issues in your area and that voice is prioritized over data.  This is often known as QOS or Quality of Service. 

It may end up that your whole block is dealing with this and it's not just you.  While I'm not a trained technician or cisco whiz in this stuff, I think these would be good areas to start with.  Go ahead and call your ISP first if you are doing voice and data through them.

Good luck.

[portlandian]

afaik they all connect via 'ethernet' but I don't know what 'digital' is. Essentially, they all have a network cable that goes directly to a switch that connects them to the mitel box.

also, i will have to double check, (it's in another bldg a few miles away, and i wont be able to make it over there today since i have a doctors appt in an hour), but i think the people with computers have the network cable come into the phone, then a cable comes out of the phone and goes into the PC.

I don't think voice and data are on separate networks (the mitel server is 192.168.1.17 and computers are in similar ranges like 192.168.1.36) and I think our internet connection is therefor shared by both.

I'm going to place a call now to the ISP to find out what the deal is...