CenturyLink's 100 Gbps Backbone and Metro Upgrade

The ever advancing telecom network takes another leap forward at CenturyLink.

Pieter Poll, Senior Vice President of national and international network planning, engineering and construction for CenturyLink expects the carrier’s U.S. 100 Gbps wavelength service deployment, to be popular with large enterprise, government and wholesale customers. In addition, Poll said in an email to Telecompetitor, “We will use 100G waves for all our IP backbone growth going forward so even consumers benefit from our 100G introduction.”

The 100 Gbsp service uses, Coherent Optical Processors. Use of these processors involve a “fundamental change” in how data is sent over optical connections, Ciena Senior Vice President of Global Marketing Rick Dodd told Connected Planet. Instead of simply turning a light on and off as with traditional optical processing, coherent optical processing works “more like the wireless world—you can change the phase and amplitude,” Dodd said.

In comparison with the traditional approach, coherent optics can support higher bandwidth speeds, currently as high as 100 Gb/s, said Dodd. The technology also enables high-bandwidth communications to be supported over some types of fiber that would not otherwise support such high speeds, added Dodd.

Sources:
http://www.telecompetitor.com/centurylink-exec-details-100-gbps-backbone-and-metro-upgrade/

http://connectedplanetonline.com/IP-NGN/news/ciena-expands-use-of-coherent-optical-processing-0302/index.html

That Old Black Telephone

That Old Black Telephone This link goes to a telecom industry web site blog. The author, Bob Stoffels, tells a story about a talk he gave to group of people regarding how rotary dial phones worked. He had to describe how these ancient phones looked as a young man in the audience had never seen one before. He goes on to talk about pay phones and the tricks he played in his college days. Pay phones! I can remember when I last saw one of those. I found the post a bit of entertaining telecom nostalgia.

Deliberate Dumbing Down of the World

The basic purpose of my blog is to educate anyone who cares to know about the telecommunication network. My ebook (see the Telecom Network Ebook tab) explains basic network structure. My specialty is what is known in the industry as Outside Plant.

I have heard several times from various sources, including managers at AT&T, that employers prefer to hire persons with college degrees not because that degree would give the new employee the data they need to do the job but that the employer can feel confident that his new employee is trainable. That alone is a sad testimonial for our educational system. The completion of high school should accomplish that.

In looking into the educational process, I encountered a Utube video that exposes some shocking truths about the general educational system forwarded by the United States government. I invite you to watch this video and see if it explains the reason for the downfall of our education in general.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDyDtYy2I0M

Please watch this video.

Outside Plant Show & Tell

As you drive around your community you will find telecommunications equipment on the side of the road and over your head on telephone poles. You may have equipment in your back or front yard that you are curious about.

Although fiber optic circuits are the latest and greatest, most of our calls are still transmitted on copper wires from your home or office back towards the Central Office for some distance. The Central Office is a building where all cables in a geographic area connect to a switch. These cables and equipment are known as Outside Plant.

I’ll do a little Show and Tell in this and future posts. If you would like to get more information on something you have seen, use my contact page to ask me.

This is a picture of a terminal attached to a telephone pole. A terminal can be defined as: a point at which a telephone line ends, or is connected to other circuits of a network. In this case, this terminal is used to connect wires from an office or home to the network.

If you look closely you can see a small cable coming up from the ground in the middle of the pole to the terminal. This terminal is "fed" from buried cable. To the left of that cable are two smaller black cables. These come from the terminal and go to buildings on the other side of the fence. These are known as Buried Service Wires.

The next picture shows what is inside. It is a simple device with screw lugs to attach the buried service wires. It's capacity is 25 circuits; two wires a piece.

The reason this terminal is exposed is that it is located in Florida where the ground water table is fairly close to the surface. Buried terminals are used but it would be a water tight version. This method of placement is effective and very accessible to technicians.