Mike, Sorry that I can't come up with a "meaty" response
at this time as I'm out of time for tonight and the rest
of the month. Will check in after April 3rd.
Best,
Mardy.
RE NHC .. This obviously biased article may be of
some help.
TELEPHONE PROVISIONING ? THE DAWN OF A NEW AGE
Switchex/DVS The Physical Layer Management Solution Eliminates Manual Cabling Intervention Forever
By: Aldo Panessidi
Director of Marketing
NHC Communication Inc.
AS PRINTED IN THE OCTOBER/99 ISSUE OF TELECOM RESELLER
Telecommunications Networks are the heart of today?s successful enterprise, their finely tuned performance can be the competitive edge for any company vying to increase profitability in the present ?breakneck speed? environment of the business world. As such, the Telecommunication Manager is required to maintain the ?pulse? of the network to ensure the integrity and operation of the telecommunication?s network?s infrastructure when performing moves, adds and changes (MACs), line provisioning services and loop qualification, while maintaining expenditure and system downtime at a minimum.
Typically, enterprises will have a specific number of both telephone trunks and telephony services from their Regional Bell Operating Company?s (RBOC) central office (CO) connected directly to their private PBX. These incoming trunks contain a number of telephone lines that are configured into the PBX for distribution to various handsets as extension numbers. To facilitate cable tracking, lines from the PBX are first connected to a central ?patch panel? or the Main Distribution Frame (MDF) and may optionally be connected to an Intermediate Distribution Frame (IDF) from which a final connection to a handset will be completed.
When the enterprise undergoes internal restructuring, as is a common and frequent practice in any organization transferring employes or engaging new ones, the Telecommunication Manager must affect changes to the telecommunication system to reflect the corporate restructure. The Telecommunications Manager must provide new lines for the newly hired employees, while moving the existing telephone lines of the transferring employees. All these MACs to the telecommunication system are performed manually by trained technicians at either the MDF or IDF level. If the enterprise has other offices spread out at remote locations, the exercise of providing MACs is further complicated by distance. In this scenario, the technician must displace himself to perform the required MACs physically at the remote location.
To further compound the problem, MACs require on average a few days for the technician to perform and complete the requested service. For the remote locations, the service time may be increased to weeks due to the distance. This delay may result in the loss of valuable revenue for the enterprise. Moreover, in many cases, the frequency of on-going changes to the telecommunication network?s infrastructure makes it impossible to reflect and update the connection changes on the ?Cabling Plan?. As such, upon arriving to perform the requested work order, technicians find themselves more often than not following cable management from an outdated Cable Plan that does not reflect the actual connections adding a further delay to the service time and increasing the potential of human error.
But how can the Telecommunication?s Manager improve on overall system operational performance and service while minimizing system downtime and still cut back on service and labor expenditure?
The solution is at hand! NHC Communications Inc., the pioneer in physical layer management switching products, has introduced a groundbreaking new voice and data cross connect switch ? Switchex/DVS ? a total integrated solution designed to address and perform local and remote loop qualification and testing, service provisioning and migration. It also provides fallback switching capability as an alternative path to avoid faulty connections. The Switchex/DVS replaces the traditional ?patch panel? and provides a complete turnkey system approach and its protocol independent design supports a suite of interfaces including analog voice, xDSL, ISDN, Basic Rate, X.25, Frame Relay, Fractional T1 and E1 lines.
The Switchex/DVSs cutting-edge technology is based on a robotic design that responds to the Telecommunication Manager?s needs and facilitates PBX line provisioning and management loop qualification and testing. Switchex/DVS offers the unique ability to electronically connect or reallocate individual phones or service to a PBX line, on the fly, via a central administrator?s console, without dispatching a technician or scheduling expensive ?truck rolls? allowing to service even remote sites, cost effectively.
The open architecture design adopted by the Switchex/DVS encompasses total Operational System Software and interface to third party diagnostic equipment while supporting the complete life cycle management of the telecommunication network infrastructure. The versatile Switchex/DVS technology support up to 3200 paired circuits transparently connecting loop-side pairs to equipment side pairs at the physical layer and extends to allow pairs to be grouped for special applications. The switch resides with the Customer Premises Equipment and in its largest configuration is housed in a 19 or 23 inch rack-mount chassis, giving it a small footprint ideal for telecommunication co-applications where space is at a premium.
The software component also integrates state-of-the-art technological design principles and provides support for both pre-configured and user-defined scenarios that enhance productivity and improve customer service by allowing complex changes to be accumulated and initiated after normal business hours. Moreover, all MACs are tracked in ?real time? and are maintained in an updated Network Cable Map. The GUI-based SNMP Connection Management software allows for the unattended local or remote operation of three-switches controlled by one SNMP controller, while an unlimited number of controllers can be managed by one master VCCS Operating System Software residing on a PC platform can control up to ten Switchex/DVS units.
At its most cutting-edge, the Switchex/DVS enables enterprises to more efficiently manage their network?s cabling infrastructure while allowing instantaneous MACs, loop qualification and testing as well as xDSL service deployment. For Telecommunication Managers as well as for Network Managers in other settings, the Switchex/DVS has an excellent Internal Rate of Return by minimizing operating and maintenance costs, eliminating service request ?truck rolls? and minimizing network service downtime; thereby improving overall QoS and compliance to SLA.
The introduction of the Switchex/DVS arrives at a time when the Gartner Group is projecting an annual growth rate in the North American DSL market of more than 300 percent, with more than 1 million DSL lines to be installed by the year 2001. Telecommunication Managers will be under pressure to offer faster new ?a la carte? menu type options to bandwidth-hungry corporate users, producing a crushing workload for the Telecommunication Management team, as subscribers? sign on for new services and technologies.
Since NHC Communications Inc. introduced our first physical layer solution 15 years ago, we have enabled network managers at thousands of companies to automate the hundreds of physical cabling changes needed every year to maintain corporate PCs and LANs. For Telecommunication Managers as well as network managers in other settings, this is a sea change that will improve the bottom line by making it possible to make better use of human resources and minimize network downtime.
For more information contact NHC Communications Inc. at 1-800-361-1965 or visit nhc.com
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