Central Offices...

[scoob8000]

Not so much networking but..

Heres some pics of our CO, nothing huge or bleeding edge, but its home.

Latest project has been tidying up years worth of tangled wires. But without the aid of zipped ties, we're going with the wax string method.

Lets see some other CO's, I'm sure we have some members here that work at a phone company.

Looking down the switch

More of the switch

The ringing generators

Voicemail server

From the other side of the switch

DSX Panels and Lucent DDMs and Fiber XConnects

DSX Panel closeup

Cisco ONS

This is as networky as we get.

BDT2, the controller for our Next Level Equipment.

Some of our DSL shelves.

DSL Shelf close up, 1 card = 3 users.

Rear of DSX panel

Main distro frame

Back of distro frame

Closeup of wire wraps

Closeup of DSL wire wraps

Check out the neat wiring job.

This should give you an idea how mesy the wire WAS..

Same here (top of switch)

My organized power cords

Breakers, chargers (3), and inverters (2)

Our old batteries, soon to be replaced.

 

[Order]

Very very nice work.

 

[Darkstar850]

Cool stuff. I wish I could come visit a CO, as I work in the network side for a huge company, but telco land is still a mystery.
What kind of switches are those? They look similar to our passports, but not quite the same.

 

[scoob8000]

Cool stuff. I wish I could come visit a CO, as I work in the network side for a huge company, but telco land is still a mystery.
What kind of switches are those? They look similar to our passports, but not quite the same.

Nortel passport? I'll assume you mean our main switch then
http://www.icn.siemens.com/carrier/products/switching/dco.html

Each of those cards has a different functions, most carry voice ports, others do line testing, system monitoring, etc..

I'm a network geek by heart, but when I started at the telco it wasn't like anything I had expected.. I still think fiber is the neatest thing since sliced bread..

Instead of feeding hundreds of copper lines to remote locations they shoot down a fiber to a remote box and break out to copper from there.. That Next Level / Motorola stuff does most of that work.

 

[Flagg]

I knew that was a Cisco ONS! Ah memories. I've worked in so many CO's i have lost count. Those DSX panels still give me nightmares. Try wire-wrapping about 200 25 pair cables, bleh. But I did learn my color codes. Nice laceing job on the power connectors by the way. Did you lace those yourself? I never got lacing down very well, I only knew like 2 or 3 different types of knots to use.

Fiber really is cool. I didnt see any DWDM equipment in your CO. But that is slick stuff. DWDM Dense Wave Division Multiplexing. Its basically a mux for fiber. If you have a 32 lambda DWDM you can plugin 32 seperate fiber cables into it. The signals get divided into 32 seperate lambdas and go out over ONE fiber. So if you had 32 OC-192 (for whatever reason) leaving your location, theorectically they could leave over 1 fiber. Very cool stuff.

I think every network tech should work or at least be exposed to a CO and the technology surrounding it. It gives you such a clearer understanding of how things work. And it helps you communicate more efficiently with your LEC. Even tho I work in the data field now, the knowledge I gained from my 5 years in telco is priceless.

 

[scoob8000]

Yup, my boss (a very oldschool bell guy) got me hooked on the lacing. I only know the one knot myself. Theres a few of them in the telcordia book with illustrations.

Nope, no DWDM.. I have read about it, would be intrested to see it. Our fiber ring isn't OC-192 yet, I think that will come with the next software release for the Next Level stuff when we get serious about video and ADSL 2+..

How large were the CO's you worked in? (subscribers)

I knew that was a Cisco ONS! Ah memories. I've worked in so many CO's i have lost count. Those DSX panels still give me nightmares. Try wire-wrapping about 200 25 pair cables, bleh. But I did learn my color codes. Nice laceing job on the power connectors by the way. Did you lace those yourself? I never got lacing down very well, I only knew like 2 or 3 different types of knots to use.

Fiber really is cool. I didnt see any DWDM equipment in your CO. But that is slick stuff. DWDM Dense Wave Division Multiplexing. Its basically a mux for fiber. If you have a 32 lambda DWDM you can plugin 32 seperate fiber cables into it. The signals get divided into 32 seperate lambdas and go out over ONE fiber. So if you had 32 OC-192 (for whatever reason) leaving your location, theorectically they could leave over 1 fiber. Very cool stuff.

I think every network tech should work or at least be exposed to a CO and the technology surrounding it. It gives you such a clearer understanding of how things work. And it helps you communicate more efficiently with your LEC. Even tho I work in the data field now, the knowledge I gained from my 5 years in telco is priceless.

 

[niccoli]

Very nice job on the power cables. I'd love to post pictures of my CO but that's a huge no-no at my company. We actually just went from the CLEC UNE-P market to facilities based.....just put in a Metaswitch and are currently running fiber to the prem. The metaswitch will serve up to 150,000 customers ant takes up only 1/3 a rack. Maybe in the near future once construction is done I'll try to post a few pictures.

 

[Flagg]

I worked for a CLEC for several years, so I worked in actual LEC CO's. Qwest and verizon mainly. So they were serving in the 10,000 to 100,000 subscribers. So imagine your Main Distribution Frame enlarged, Like 200 Feet long and 20 Feet high. it really is quite impressive to see. I worked in a CO in downtown Seattle, that has been their for a looong time. They still had Cross Connect that were soldered on from back in the 40's and 50's, and they are still working. Granted they can't carry DSL or anything but still pretty cool to see. I also worked an MCI for a little while and that was strictly T1 and higher circuits. We had several OC-192 that passed through the node I worked at. Most were long haul circuits that were trans-atlantic and cross country circuits. We were primarily a Fujitsu and Nortel SDMS run operation, but we were testing the Cisco ONS as I was leaving the company. I really liked it. How much TL1 do you know?

 

[cc2096]

Nice looking CO, what company do you work for? I'd take some pics of my 6 switches but the switch tech would let me take my camera down there, hehe (I work in the NOC).

 

[scoob8000]

They still had Cross Connect that were soldered on from back in the 40's and 50's, and they are still working. Granted they can't carry DSL or anything but still pretty cool to see. How much TL1 do you know?

Soldered on? Awesome..

TL1? None.. I've only been with the company for about 2 months now.

 

[Flagg]

I don't know if ALL telecom equipment uses TL1. But DACS, Fiber ADM's and 13Mux's use a language called TL1. Its basically a command syntax for entering cross connects into a DACS, or some sort of Digital cross connect system.

 

[SSpiro]

That's pure sex..

..although time to clean up the cabling above the switch..

 

[niccoli]

Nice cable lacing! I'm still trying to get the hang of it.