Inside a Telephone Exchange
Have you ever
wondered what goes on
behind the
scenes of your telephone exchange?
What does all this jargon-ADSL, DSLAM, VOIP, ROUTER, actually look like?
As many of you may not know Nightwalkerbiz's Head Sysop, worked in Telstra as a Super User Network Technician.
We had access to all area's, and worked in many exchanges and have dug out a few photo's of inside
of a local exchange, that have been collected by colleages and the like over time.
Above: Customer side of the Main
Distribution Frame at a
main telephone exchange
Lots and lots of phone lines
Avove: NEC
AM-31 DSLAM
High
capacity ADSL DSLAM
Above: ADSL testing at the MDF
Testing a customer's ADSL service at the main distribution frame of a
telephone exchange.
This is the "customer" side of the MDF, with the ADSL DSLAM located in
the next room.
Above: ADSL DSLAMs
ADSL Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexers
from a variety of ISP's -
IInet, TPG, Optus, AAPT & IPrimus
DSLM'S
AND ROUTERS
TPG DSLAM
Huawei DSLAM, provides TPG ADSL2+ service
You have probably read in the news about the
Australian Goverment not allowing China's
equipment to be used here, well above is the
said equipment they are so scared about.
Cisco 10000 series Universal Broadband Routers (HFC)
4x Cisco 10K UBRs and associated RF gear to the right. These DOCSIS3 UBR's act as the modem termination point for cable broadband customers. This exchange acts as the parent site for a large number of cable customer connections.
DSLAM UNITS
Left: DSLAM cabinets
Various ISP DSLAM cabinets in the regional telephone exchange.
You have probably been told many times there are
no Telstra ports available,
but Iprimus or TPG, will have ports available due to them
having their own DLSAM's.
And usually these type of ISP's now seem to have much more
equipment than Telstra do.
Well now you know what they look like.
Just look below to see a naked one, without the cabinet.
ADSL SERVICE PORTS
Left: Alactel-Lucent 7300 ASAM DSLAM Exchange-based high density digital subscriber line access multiplexer with 3 subracks - 24 or 96 pairs (ADSL services or "ports") per connector. Here you can actually see the ports you connect into for your ADSL2+ |
MULTISERVICE ROUTERS
Tellabs 8800 Multiservice routers
Tellabs 8800 MSR's at a main transmission site with a mix of E1, Frame Relay, Gigabit Ethernet, STM-1 and STM-4 interfaces (electrical and optical).
These provide intrastate transport/backhaul for customer and internal services. ADSL DSLAMs commonly feed into these via STM-1 connections for backhaul to BRASs.
BACKUP POWER SUPPLIES
Backup batteries in case of exchange power loss
These batteries will provide about 10-12 hours of power supply
in the event of mains power failure.
This is why you never loose your telephone line or ADSL in a power failure,due to them
having a backup supply for emergencies.
We at Nightwalkerbiz must have similar backup power supplies,
but in our case we not only use battery banks for emergency use,
but use auto switching to huge deisel power generators for continuous power supply.
MOBILES AND VOIP SYSTEMS
Above: Ericsson GSM RBS200 mobile
basestation left and WCDMA RBS3206
mobile basestation to the right.
Ericsson mobile
basestations for 3G
and 4G mobile services.
Coaxial cable runs go up to flat panel
antennas on roof of building.
VOIP Session Border Controllers
A pair of SIP Session Border Controllers for VOIP.
This is the controllers for the Voice over IP
phone systems some ISP's supply so you can talk
for free over the internet.
THE BIG GREEN BOXES-ADSL RIMS/TOP HATS
The big green boxes you see in
the street, have you ever wondered what they were?
These boxes house your ADSL2+ internet and telephone supply from the
exchange.
ADSL2+ DSLAMs are being built into a housing which is ingeniously being
mounted to a
pre-existing streetside cabinet (RIM or CMUX) which services the
surrounding streets.
Thus the name "tophat".
This will enable home broadband (ADSL2+) to areas for the first time
whilst also installing additional ports (ADSL2+)
in numerous locations that have "no spare ports".
These are mini exchanges located in the street, not unlike the main
exchange that houses very similar hardware.
Telstra is splitting up Distribution area's, to service what they can't
in the exchange.
Basically an ESA (your exchange service area) is split up into
multple DA's.
A tophat may serve one or more DA's dependent on size of DA,
these mini exchanges utilse gigabit ethernet to each tophat.