To let you feel my pain...

>>>>Perhaps you will be the exception to the rule and your ISDN will work the day it is installed.

>>Not a chance. The telco people have no idea what an IP address is, the red-tape and finger-pointing from one department to another is rampant... More later if I survive.

Well, it's the weekend, and today (Friday) we worked our way through 12 *different* people from low to high rank at the independent telco that was to provide our ISDN 128K with dedicated IP address. (The one that's been ordered since August).

Couldn't find ANYONE there who even knew what an IP address was, until late in the day our company president got through to the administrative assistant to the President of the telco, who contacted him and got things handed off to a Vice President. Meanwhile, I successfully reached the MIS director for the entire organization, and he handed me to two high-up sales department managers, who DID know the technical side of things.

Long story short....

We are abandoning the ISDN approach, since they technically cant or wont give us the dedicated IP with it, and are switching to a 128K fractional T-1 over the same BellSouth-installed circuit. To appease us, the VP threw in a free router, and promised early-Monday cutover.

It seems much more likely that we'll have success with the VP involved, since he can order all the departments to cut out the red-tape crap and JUST DO IT! I think they didn't like the idea of our possible lawsuit, since our Y2K plans revolve around the remote stores accessing a dedicated IP on our in-house server (and they've had the order since August!!!)

More on Monday...