Site Trunking Event - Dub/Wor

The Dublin/Worthington side of the COIRS system went into site trunking just after midnight this morning for approximately 8 minutes. We discovered that OarNET, our connectivity provider to the master site in Delaware, was conducting another round of switch upgrades like they conducted back on September 16th. However, in this instance, they failed to notify us of the work so we could be prepared.

 

We have talked with OarNET and reinforced the importance of advanced notice for any work being performed on our circuit. They apologized and assured me they are taking steps to improve notifications.

 

Sorry for the inconvenience last night and we want to assure your staff and users that we are working with OarNET to ensure it doesn't not happen again.

OARNet Maintenance

OARNet will be conducting maintenance on the network during the overnight of September 15th. Work will begin just before midnight and last until approximately 03:00 on September 16th. OARNet will be doing upgrades to network switches. This WILL result in multiple service interruptions of approximately 5 minutes in length. When the outages occur, the system will go into SITE TRUNKING and consoles will lose connectivity. Agencies can continue using the system when it is in site trunking mode. Dispatchers will need to use walkies or back up control stations during site trunking.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Jay Somerville.

Governing Board Meeting - Friday July 22nd

The next meeting of the COIRS Governing Board is scheduled for Friday July 22nd at the Worthington Police Headquarters, 6555 Worthington-Galena Road, at 9:30am. The meeting is open to the public. CLICK HERE for a copy of the agenda.

For more information, contact COIRS Secretary Jay Somerville

Critical System Outage

On Friday 07/22 at approximately 10am, both the Delaware and the Dub/Wor sides of the COIRS radio system will be placed into SITE TRUNKING to allow B&C to reboot the embassy switch that serves all of the dispatch consoles. This will cause the dispatch consoles to lose connectivity and require dispatchers use walkies or control stations to communicate during the outage. Walkies and mobiles will receive a site trunking message on their radios but will be able to communicate normally during this time. Emergency banners will have limited abilities.

Agencies are strongly encouraged to stay on their home talk-groups during this outage unless other problems arise.
The outage is expected to last approximately 30 minutes and is being done to address an ongoing audio problem with one of the channel cards.

If you have any questions, or have an urgent issue that should delay this outage, please contact Patrick Brandt ASAP.

Huntley Site Restored

The Huntley site is now back on line after AT&T made temporary repairs to the T1 line that was taken down earlier today. AT&T reports they will need to return on Tuesday May 31st to completely replace the line. They will notify us before the work begins as it will take the site down for approximately 45 minutes.

Huntley Rd Site Down

At 11:22am today a truck struck the telephone company facilities (overhead lines) in front of the Huntley Rd tower site taking down the T1 connection between the site and Worthington PD. XO Communications, our T1 provider at this site, has been notified and is dispatching crews for the repair (ticket #2315471).

Although the site is off line, coverage in Worthington is back up by the Hard Road and Lazelle Road tower sites. Other than reduced fringe area and minor in building coverage issues, the users will see no interruptions in service.

A message will be posted when the site is returned to full service.

 

OARNet Maintenance

OARNet will be conducting maintenance on the network during the overnight of April 25th and the overnight of April 26th to "cut in" some new fiber optic connections. This may result periodic service interruptions of no more than 1 minute in length per outage. If there is an outage, the system will go into SITE TRUNKING and consoles will lose connectivity. Agencies can continue using the system when it is in site trunking mode. Dispatchers will need to use walkies or back up control stations during site trunking.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Jay Somerville.

Governing Board Meeting

The next meeting of the COIRS Governing Board is scheduled for Friday April 22, 2011 at 9:30am at the Worthington Police Headquarters building, 6665 Worthington-Galena Road. CLICK HERE for a copy of the meeting agenda.

For more information about the meeting, or to submit an item for the agenda, please contact Jay Somerville

Are your accessories the right fit?

Much thought, research and consideration is put into selecting the right radio for the job. Will it be rugged enough? Is it intrinsically safe? Do the controls, buttons and knobs work well with gloves on? But do you give the same amount of consideration to the accessories you use with your radios?

One area of concern, especially to fire agencies, is the remote speaker microphone. Many agencies have not given much thought to speaker mics, treating them as "disposable" items. But is that speaker mic up to the harsh environment of firefighting or law enforcement?

The Shaker Heights Fire Department recently experienced problems on the fireground with a radio that would continually key up and block other traffic, only to discover the problem was with a speaker mic that had gotten wet. Although they had purchased "water resistant" mics, they in fact needed "water proof" mics.

Shaker Heights did internal testing of their current speaker mics and confirmed their theory: water proof mics are preferred on the fireground. CLICK HERE to read a copy of their report.

Lightning Strike at Huntley Road

During the storms in the early morning hours of Monday February 28th, it appears that the Huntley Road site took a lightning hit and was knocked off the air. The site was brought back on line on Wednesday March 2nd at approximately 5pm after replacing the channel bank cage, the #2 WAN card and a poly-phaser. Also damaged in the storm was the interface board for the stand by generator and the mid-tower lighting. Repairs are in progress on those two systems.

During the outage, there was a minor loss of coverage in some areas. Users did not report any issues as the overlapping coverage of the Lazelle Road tower was used by allowing the Worthington talk-groups to roam onto the Delaware side of the system during the outage.

The cost of this outage is still be calculated.

Governing Board Meeting

The next meeting of the COIRS Governing Board is set for Friday January 21st at 9:30am at Worthington PD. CLICK HERE for a copy of the meeting agenda.

For more information about the meeting, or to submit an item for the agenda, please contact Jay Somerville.

Recent Outages Diagnosed

The system outages that occurred on 12/15, 12/30 and 01/06 were caused by connectivity interruptions on the OarNET network. OarNET is the connectivity provider between the Dub/Wor side of the system and the master site located in Delaware. On each of the three nights, OarNET engineers conducted upgrades to the network that required the switches to be rebooted, causing the 8 to 9 minute outages.

OarNET routinely notified users in advance of this work, but these notices were not specifically going to the COIRS representative, but instead to agency IT employees. OarNET apologized repeatedly for the interruption and has taken steps to ensure COIRS is notified before any future outages.

Site Trunking Dub/Wor System

At approximately 12:25 this morning, the Dub/Wor simulcast zone went into site trunking causing a loss of console connection at both the Dublin and Worthington communications centers. The outage lasted approximately 8 minutes.

System managers are again following up on the outage, which appears to be T1 interruption between the Avery Road site and the Dublin Justice Center. Motorola has been engaged to help track the outages and determine if there is some 

The system is back in full operation.