Call Accounting Software hit by bug?

greenspun.com : LUSENET : TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) : One Thread

Or maybe not. An example of what may be comming, and the Great Unknowns...

Our call accounting system that monitors telephone calls for some of the city phones has the bug, (or so we found out today). We still don't know what it will or will not do.

What is this software and what does it do? All calls in most of the city offices are handled first by local (located in the same building) city owned phone switches before they are sent out over Telco trunk lines. Think of the phone switches as a sort of server-router combo in a computer network.

The call accounting software keeps track of what calls were made from which phones and to which numbers. This information is used mostly to make sure employees arent calling dial-a-porn, and to keep track of phone use for internal accounting purposes (ie, whose budget gets what part of the bill). It's basically a big cash register at the check out line, only it doesnt actually proce$$ the transaction, just comes up with a tally.

Two points. One, all our phones are working. Two, this isn't mission critical (we're going to have to pay the same phone bill from GTE anyhow)

Big unknowns: will the call accounting software actually be right, or will it's data be totally wacko?

Is GTE using the same software? (maybe) And will our bill be totally wacko too?

Why didn't we notice this (non-compliant) software earlier?

Notice, the firmware/hardware/embeddeds seems to work, but the "accounting" portion may still have bizzare bugs in it.

I'll post more as I fin

-- hunchback (quasimodo@beltwor.com), January 06, 2000


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