Wats And Leased Lines The Baker Offices example essay topic

Table of Content Introduction 3 PBX and Centrex 4 Rotary and DTMF 6 WATS and Leased Lines 7 ISO and OSI 9 Conclusions 11 Reference List 12 Introduction Networking and telephony is a part of our everyday environment, whether it be in our homes or in our place of business. We will somehow come into contact with one or the other in some shape or fashion. At Baker, we are no different from any other business. The infrastructure of Baker is not a simple pc and telephone setup. The network incorporates everything from a simple analog line to our data network backbone that is made of T-3 lines, IS ND lines, and IPFR provided by the AT&T data center. Baker has 30 offices all over the country and a couple of offices in abroad in Europe.

I will be discussing the setup of the Houston office, since I am most familiar with this office. PBX and Centrex The Houston office of Baker is comprised of three types of phones, well, at least until the company moves into one central location. Currently there are three offices in Houston that are all a block apart. The building that I support houses an old Merlin Legend telephone system.

It's funny, because I have to set the date on the voicemail to the year 1999 so that when users check their messages, it will give the correct month and date. The system is comprised of about 100 direct-inward dialed (DID's), some used as analog and some use as digital lines. The digital lines are ISDN lines that allow for digital transmission of voice and data over ordinary telephone copper wires. Direct-inward dialing routes calls from the outside lines to the PBX, which allows telephone systems to bypass an operator.

The PBX then routes the call to the desired extension and if there is no answer, the call goes to the users' voicemail. PBXs are used to route calls between people within an organization and it routes calls to users from the organization to people that are not connected to the internal system. Centrex systems do not require onsite switching equipment like the PBXs. They usually handle outgoing calls made from inside an organization without the use or intervention of an operator. In the case of my office, a trunk or outside path is grounded by the PBX or central office, which is why users have to dial an access code (a nine in our case) before they can make any outside calls. I am not sure, but I know we have over 10 trunks that go out from our office.

"The difference between PBXs and Centrex is in the location and ownership of the equipment that routes calls. Private branch exchanges are located on customers' premises. Centrex is usually located at the telephone company and is part of the central exchange or central office" (Dodd, 1999, chp 2). Rotary and DTMF Going a little further into our telephony phone system structure, Baker's telephones are all touch tone or tone dialing phones. Although the phones that are supplied to us have the ability to support pulse dialing for backward compatibility; I have not seen or know anyone that uses those features in today's business world. The old name for pulse phones were rotary phones, and the name for touch tone phones are dual tone multi-frequency phone, or DTMF.

"Pulse dialing or loop disconnect dialing, also called Rotary or Dec adic dialing in the United Kingdom, and is pulsing in which a direct-current pulse train is produced by interrupting a steady signal according to a fixed or formatted code for each digit and at a standard pulse repetition rate" (Wikipedia). When a number is dialed on a rotary phone, the phone generates pulses that are making and breaking of the telephone connection. When dialing a number the user hears rapid clicks which represent when numbers are dialed, except for 0, which has ten clicks. Rotary phones are still in use, I personally couldn't say where, but I know there out there. The successor of the rotary phone is the touch tone phone, which correctly is called the dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF). "DTMF has generally replace loop disconnect, pulse dialing.

The DTMF is used for telephone signaling over the line in the voice frequency band to the call switching center. DTMF was developed to allow for long distance numbers to be dialed over signals" (Wikipedia) But as we see today, the "touch tone phone" is used on all new business implantation's as well as in new home residences. Touch tone will still be used with the widespread usage of VoIP. WATS and Leased Lines The Baker offices are all spread out over the United States, with one in the UK and another in Alaska. To pull my office along with the other offices, Baker is setup through the AT&T data center via Ipfr (IP-Enabled Frame Relay). IPFR was designed by AT&T to offer companies that needed to expand site-to-site frame links at certain locations to support multi point connections.

The service still uses frame relay as the base technology, but runs a multi-protocol label switching IP-based VPN over top of the frame. This VPN connection allows for the Baker offices to have a greater level of security for data traveling across the network. The network backbone allows for Baker to have implemented VoIP into the current infrastructure. Since Voice over IP uses an internet protocol to transmit voice over data lines, it also cuts down on long distance cost for the company. With in the next couple of years, every Baker office will be using VoIP, which will be put as a standard at that time.

With VoIP slowing coming onto the scene, Baker is using a leased line. A T-1 is a type of leased line that is always active; data is always moving to and from on the line. A leased line which is another form of long distance connections, allows for businesses to connect to distant offices for a small fee (well, probably not too small a fee). A leased line is always active and the carrier assures the line will produce great quality, since no one can use the line except for the company that wants to lease the line. The leased lines along with the VoIP allows for people internally to make a long distance call by dialing the four digit extension of the opposite party and not be charged for long distance cost.

This is already saving money to call the UK. Since Baker is really not a support organization, we don't have many WATS (wide-area telephone service) lines put into place. "WATS is a specialized form of fixed-rate long-distance telecommunication service" (what is. com). There are a couple lines that we have for clients who may call our main office located in Pittsburg, but those are probably the only ones out there. WATS lines are come in three types: IN-WATS for incoming calls, OUT-WATS for out-going calls, or a combination of both.

Whether the call is incoming or outgoing, the subscriber of the lines are charged for the usage. The numbers that we are normally familiar with are: 800,888, or 877. The only company that I worked for that had a number of WATS lines, was a long distance provider where I was a customer service agent (I don't miss that). WATS lines are generally charged as flat rates per month to the subscriber.

ISO and OSI To conduct business in a proper manner, many companies along with my company many rules and regulations that they have to follow, for example International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and Open Systems Interconnection (OSI). With these standards put in place, it makes us along with other companies accountable for our actions. "ISO is the world's largest developer of standards. ISO standards contribute to making the development, manufacturing and supply of products and services more efficient, safer and cleaner. They make trade between countries easier and fairer. They provide governments with a technical base for health, safety and environmental legislation.

They aid in transferring technology to developing countries. ISO standards also serve to safeguard consumers, and users in general, of products and services - as well as to make their lives simpler". ISO helps the world by promoting a free and fair global trading system. Baker has to follow ISO standards since we have a lot of contractors and employees out on offshore drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico and we also perform a lot of work for out of country clients as well as the Department of Defense. "Baker standards are based on the ISO 9000 standard, which provides a framework for quality management throughout the process of producing and delivering products and services for the customer" (iso. org). A major accomplishment of the ISO was how they standardized protocols to allow computers to talk to each other on a common ground.

Standardizing these protocols allowed for documents to be delivered in a quicker manner. This standard of protocols is known as the Open System Interconnection (OSI) protocol. "This is a protocol suite of numerous standards based on the OSI reference model. These protocols are part of an international program to develop data-networking protocols and other standards that facilitate multi-vendor equipment interoperability. The OSI program grew out of a need for international networking standards and is designed to facilitate communication between hardware and software systems despite differences in underlying architectures" (cisco. com). The OSI model is a layered concept of how information travels from one node to another.

This concept gives network analyst and developers a better understanding of how to better design a network and works very well when they have to trouble shoot a problem. The end-users and specialized developers do not necessarily use the OSI model as a business tool to gain more clients, but they are indeed using the concept whenever they go out and market to clients about out hosting abilities. Conclusions With the internet and better means of communication being developed on a daily basis, there is going to be a constant change in the way data networks and telephony are today. We have gone from rotary dialed phones, which I can vaguely remember at my grandmother's house to voice recognition cell phones that dial the number for you.

We have also went from some crazy number in the past for data travel, like 33 baud /'s to what we are at today, reaching speeds that I can't imagine of over 12 Mb / 's.