Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) is a set of communication standards for simultaneous digital transmission of voice, video, data, and other network services over the digitalised circuits of the public switched telephone network. Work on the standard began in 1980 at Bell Labs and was formally standardized in 1988 in the CCITT "Red Book". By the time the standard was released, newer networking systems with much greater speeds were available, and ISDN saw relatively little uptake in the wider market. One estimate suggests ISDN use peaked at a worldwide total of 25 million subscribers at a time when 1.3 billion analog lines were in use. ISDN has largely been replaced with digital subscriber line (DSL) systems of much higher performance.
In telecommunications, a channel service unit (CSU) is a line bridging device for use with T-carrier, which
In telecommunications, a customer-premises equipment or customer-provided equipment (CPE) is any terminal and associated equipment located at a subscriber's premises and connected with a carrier's telecommunication circuit at the demarcation point ("demarc"). The demarc is a point established in a building or complex to separate customer equipment from the equipment located in either the distribution infrastructure or central office of the communications service provider.
Digital subscriber line is a family of technologies that are used to transmit digital data over telephone lines. In telecommunications marketing, the term DSL is widely understood to mean asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL), the most commonly installed DSL technology, for Internet access.
In telecommunications, a network interface device is a device that serves as the demarcation point between the carrier's local loop and the customer's premises wiring. Outdoor telephone NIDs also provide the subscriber with access to the station wiring and serve as a convenient test point for verification of loop integrity and of the subscriber's inside wiring.
The U interface or U reference point is a Basic Rate Interface (BRI) in the local loop of an Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN), connecting the network terminator (NT1/2) on the customer's premises to the line termination (LT) in the carrier's local exchange, in other words providing the connection from subscriber to central office.
A digital subscriber line access multiplexer is a network device, often located in telephone exchanges, that connects multiple customer digital subscriber line (DSL) interfaces to a high-speed digital communications channel using multiplexing techniques. Its cable internet (DOCSIS) counterpart is the cable modem termination system.
In telephony, the demarcation point is the point at which the public switched telephone network ends and connects with the customer's on-premises wiring. It is the dividing line which determines who is responsible for installation and maintenance of wiring and equipment—customer/subscriber, or telephone company/provider. The demarcation point varies between countries and has changed over time.
A leased line is a private telecommunications circuit between two or more locations provided according to a commercial contract. It is sometimes also known as a private circuit, and as a data line in the UK. Typically, leased lines are used by businesses to connect geographically distant offices.
In telephony, pair gain is the transmission of multiple plain old telephone service (POTS) channels over the twisted pair local loop traditionally used for a single subscriber line in telephone systems. Pair gain has the effect of creating additional subscriber lines. This is typically used as an expedient way to solve subscriber line shortages at a location by using existing wiring, instead of installing new wires from the central office to the customer premises. The term was invented in the middle 20th century by analogy with earlier use of gain to extend telephone local loops far from the telephone exchange.
CLLI code is a Common Language Information Services identifier used within the North American telecommunications industry to specify the location and function of telecommunications equipment or of a relevant location such as an international border or a supporting equipment location, like a manhole or pole. Originally, they were used by Bell Telephone companies, but since all other telecommunications carriers needed to interconnect with the dominant Bell companies, CLLI code adoption eventually became universal. CLLI codes are now maintained and issued by iconectiv, which claims trademarks on the names "Common Language" and "CLLI".
Transaction Language 1 (TL1) is a widely used management protocol in telecommunications. It is a cross-vendor, cross-technology man-machine language, and is widely used to manage optical (SONET) and broadband access infrastructure in North America. TL1 is used in the input and output messages that pass between Operations Support Systems (OSSs) and Network Elements (NEs). Operations domains such as surveillance, memory administration, and access and testing define and use TL1 messages to accomplish specific functions between the OS and the NE. TL1 is defined in Telcordia Technologies Generic Requirements document GR-831-CORE.
A business telephone system is a telephone system typically used in business environments, encompassing the range of technology from the key telephone system (KTS) to the private branch exchange (PBX).
In telecommunications, interconnection is the physical linking of a carrier's network with equipment or facilities not belonging to that network. The term may refer to a connection between a carrier's facilities and the equipment belonging to its customer, or to a connection between two or more carriers.
A passive optical network (PON) is a fiber-optic telecommunications network that uses only unpowered devices to carry signals, as opposed to electronic equipment. In practice, PONs are typically used for the last mile between Internet service providers (ISP) and their customers. In this use, a PON has a point-to-multipoint topology in which an ISP uses a single device to serve many end-user sites using a system such as 10G-PON or GPON. In this one-to-many topology, a single fiber serving many sites branches into multiple fibers through a passive splitter, and those fibers can each serve multiple sites through further splitters. The light from the ISP is divided through the splitters to reach all the customer sites, and light from the customer sites is combined into the single fiber. Many fiber ISPs prefer this system.
A digital loop carrier (DLC) is a system which uses digital transmission to extend the range of the local loop farther than would be possible using only twisted pair copper wires. A DLC digitizes and multiplexes the individual signals carried by the local loops onto a single datastream on the DLC segment.
A subscriber loop carrier or subscriber line carrier (SLC) provides telephone exchange-like telephone interface functionality. SLC remote terminals are typically located in areas with a high density of telephone subscribers, such as a residential neighborhood, or very rural areas with widely dispersed customers, that are remote from the telephone company's central office (CO). Two or four T1 circuits connect the SLC remote terminal to the central office terminal (COT), in the case of a universal subscriber loop carrier (USLC). An integrated subscriber loop carrier (ISLC) has its T-spans terminating directly in time division switching equipment in the telephone exchange.
An optical line termination (OLT), also called an optical line terminal, is a device which serves as the service provider endpoint of a passive optical network. It provides two main functions:
- to perform conversion between the electrical signals used by the service provider's equipment and the fiber optic signals used by the passive optical network.
- to coordinate the multiplexing between the conversion devices on the other end of that network.
In telecommunications, radio frequency over glass (RFoG) is a deep-fiber network design in which the coax portion of the hybrid fiber coax (HFC) network is replaced by a single-fiber passive optical network (PON). Downstream and return-path transmission use different wavelengths to share the same fiber. The return-path wavelength standard is expected to be 1610 nm, but early deployments have used 1590 nm. Using 1590/1610 nm for the return path allows the fiber infrastructure to support both RFoG and a standards-based PON simultaneously, operating with 1490 nm downstream and 1310 nm return-path wavelengths.
Network Termination 1 (NT1) or Network Termination type 1 refers to equipment in an Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) that physically and electrically terminates the network at the customer's premises. The NT1 network termination provides signal conversion and timing functions which correspond to layer 1 of the OSI model. In a Basic Rate Interface, the NT1 connects to line termination (LT) equipment in the provider's telephone exchange via the local loop two wire U interface and to customer equipment via the four wire S interface or T interface. The S and T interfaces are electrically equivalent, and the customer equipment port of a NT1 is often labelled as S/T interface. There are many types of NT1 available.
