SWITCHING Version 2

Telephone Network Architecture

Telephone Switches
Traditional PBX and Centrex
SIP, Soft Switches, Hosted PBX and IP Centrex
SIP Trunking
Next Topic: VoIP System Components

JFMabanglo
Electronics Engineering Department
Rizaltech 
 TELEPHONE NETWORK ARCHITECTURE

The telephone network is

traditionally made up of
three parts:
✗
Access network,
✗
Switching network, &
✗
Transmission network
Access Network
✗
The access network , also called the
outside plant, is the equipment and
cabling used to connect the customer to
the switching network, typically a central
office.
✗
Also referred to as the “last mile”
✗
Historically, implemented with twisted-
pair copper wires in feeder cables
leading from the CO to wiring
connection points in neighborhoods
called Outside Plant Interfaces (OPIs)
or Serving Area Concept (SAC) boxes.
✗
From there, distribution cables run
down streets, with terminals where a
drop wire to the customer premise is
connected.
✗
The metallic connection between the
CO and the customer premise forms a
loop where current flows.
✗
Neigborhoods with these infrastructure
are called brownfields.
 TELEPHONE NETWORK ARCHITECTURE

The telephone network is

traditionally made up of
three parts:
✗ Access network,
✗ Switching network, &
✗ Transmission network
Access Network...
Access Network...

●
Fiber to the Neighborhood (FTTN) then
DSL to the subscriber is used to
implement high-speed internet access.
●
A fiber is pulled from the CO to the
outside plant enclosure.
●
Inside, the fiber is connected to a
DSLAM which houses banks of DSL
modems.
●
A short pair of copper wires is used to
connect one of the modems to one
subscriber for high-speed internet.
Access Network...

●
In new neighborhoods, called
greenfields, fiber to the premise is
deployed.
●
For residences and small businesses,
a Passive Optical network (PON)
strategy may be employed.
●
Medium and large businesses might be
connected with a dedicated fiber.
Switching Network

✗ The switching part of the network was

traditionally organized into a five-level
hierarchy.
✗
The central office is at the lowest level,
called a wire center where all the access
wires converge and are connected to
switching equipment.
✗
In the past, this switching equipment was a
circuit switch, establishing connectivity to
an outgoing circuit for the duration of a
phone call.
Switching Network

✗
Going forward, this switching equipment ✗ The COs in a city are connected to its toll
is a packet switch or router, forwarding center, the second level in the switching
one packet at a time. hierarchy.
✗
This equipment is called edge
equipment by network engineers as it is
the edge of the telephone company’s
core network.
✗
The edge equipment provides a data
concentration function and converts the
physical media of the access circuit and
the physical media of the connections
between switching centers and the
transmission network.
Transmission Network

✗ The transmission network connects

switching centers, providing high capacity
and high-availabilty connectivity between
COs and between cities.
✗
This part of the network is called the
network core by transmission engineers.
✗ In the past, the capacity was organized
into fixed 64 kb/s channels, with switches
or routers directing traffic onto the
channels.
✗
Nowadays, traffic on the core is all
packets, transmitted on demand.
 TELEPHONE SWITCHES
Telephone switches are used to establish
connections across a network for phone calls.
The purpose of a switch is to establish a
connection between one input and one output.
Circuit Switching
CO Switches
✗ In the case of a CO switch, the
connection is full-time for the duration
of the call, between a loop and a
trunk, or between two loops for a call
local to that switch.
✗ In a toll center, this would be trunk to
trunk connections.
✗ This type of switching: a full-time
connection for the duration of a call is
called circuit switching.
✗ Telephone switches are computers
✗ They are often constructed as rack-
mount systems enclosed in cabinets.
✗ All switching equipment looks similar: like
large filing cabinets with many wires
connected on the back and indicator
lights on the front.
Telephone Switches...

✗ These switches are capable of

handling up to 100,000 loops, but
are usually built up to a maximum
of 60,000 loops per switch.
Telephone Switches...

Line Cards
✗ The twisted pair loops are carried into
the switch on a Main Distribution
Frame.
✗ The components of a switch that
terminates a loop is called a line card.
✗ Individual line cards are implemented
as a small PCB, mounted in a drawer
in a shelf in a rack as shown.
✗ There are 48 line card modules in the
drawer illustrated, meaning that there
can be over 1000 line card drawers as
part of this CO switch.
Telephone Switches...

Digital Switching
✗ All of the communication of voice
inside the switch is digital.
✗ The analog voice signal on the
loop is digitized at 8000 bytes per
second, or 64 kb/s on the line card.
 TRADITIONAL PBX and CENTREX

✗ These are systems developed before VoIP PBX

was a reality.
✗ Private Branch Exchange
✗
Both are based on a large rack-mount ✗ The customer can buy, rent, or lease
computer system called a telephone
one, and can provide their own dial
switch.
tone, in-building dialing plan, and in-
✗
The main difference between Centrex and building switching.
PBX: location ✗ If the dialing plan involves assigning
✗
It depends whether the switch is at the every telephone in the building a four-
customer premise (PBX), or in the Central digit “extension” number, a user enters
Office (Centrex). just the four-digit number to make a
call to another phone connected to the
PBX in-building.
Traditional PBX and Centrex...

● Many features such as no-answer transfer, – they hear a dial tone from the line card
call pickup groups, Interactive Voice in the PBX. If they dial 9 for an
Response, and call center like functions “outside line”, they are assigned a
such as Automated Call Distributor can be PBX trunk, a circuit-switched
provided by the PBX. connection is madeto the CO switch,
and the user hears a second dial tone
PBX Trunks generated by the CO switch.
✗ A PBX is connected to the network
with PBX trunks between the PBX and
the CO switch
✗ Usually, one trunk is provided for
approximately ten telephones
✗ When a user goes off-hook,
Traditional PBX and Centrex
✗ PBX trunks can be ordered as one-
way incoming, one-way outgoing, or
both way.
Digital Telephones
✗ Electronic Business Sets
✗ Both Centrex and PBXs support
analog and digital telephones
✗ Digital telephones are called
Electronic Business Sets; voice is
digitized in the telephone and
communicated as 1s and 0s.
✗ For the traditional Centrex and PBX,
the coding and formatting of the
digitized voice and the call control
messages are not standards-based,
meaning that only telephones supplied
with the Centrex or PBX will work.
✗ New generation VoIP systems are
much more likely to use standards-
based coding and control which would
allow the use of third party
telephones.
Traditional PBX and Centrex

Attendant ✗ An attendant is expensive, and can

route only one call at a time.
✗ An operator or attendant is required to
route inbound calls, to connect an ✗ A computer program running on the
incoming call to the correct telephone PBX performing the attendant
in-building. function, called an automated
attendant, is much less expensive
✗ Typically, all of the inbound trunks will
than an employee, and can handle
be associated with a single telephone
more than one incoming call at a time.
number valid on the public telephone
network.
✗ When a caller dials that number, the
CO switch will connect the caller to an
available incoming trunk.
Traditional PBX and Centrex
IVR
✗ The automated attendant function
is usually implemented in practice
as part of an Interactive Voice
Response system running on the
PBX.
✗ The most common implementation
involves a recorded message
asking the caller to signal a
number corresponding to one of a
number of menu choices.
Direct Inward Dialing (DID)
✗ The telco controls the telephone numbers
and charges per number, per month to
assign numbers to users.
✗ The lowest-cost configuration with a PBX
is to pay for only one telephone number
for the PBX. All inbound PBX trunks are
associated with that one telephone
number in a hunt group.
✗ When a call is placed to that number, the
CO switch hunts through the group of
trunks to find the next one available. The
caller must as a second step indicate to
the attendant to whom they wish to speak.
Traditional PBX and Centrex
✗ If the organization desires to eliminate
this two-step process, they can pay
for DID service where the telephone
company assigns a DID number that
is valid on the public network, for each
of the extensions on the PBX.
Automated Call Distribution (ACD)
✗ An ACD is a computer program that
deals with situations when there are
more callers than there are people or
agents to answer the calls.
✗ The ACD is configured to have queues
associated with extension numbers.
The queues are associated with
specific activities, such as a particular
type of caller wanting to perform a
particular activity.
✗ Upon being transferred to the ACD, the
caller is placed in a queue and
recordings are typically played to the
caller to keep them interested.
✗ Agents are associated with queues.
When an agent is available, the caller
is switched from the ACD’s recording to
that agent.
Traditional PBX and Centrex...

Call Centers
✗ Inbound call centers are places where
customer service agents receive calls
from customers and access account
information via a terminal connected to
a customer care system.
✗ The end-user company buys,
integrates and maintains a PBX to
handle incoming calls, an IVR to get
information about the caller, and an
ACD to route the call to an agent, and
a customer care system to manipulate
information about customers and
orders.
Traditional PBX and Centrex...

Centrex
✗ Centrex means that the telephone
service is provided by a CO switch
rather than a PBX.
✗ Typically, part of a CO switch will be
partitioned in a software and dedicated
to a particular customer.
✗ The connections between the telephone
company and the customer are loops –
one for each telephone. If a particular
customer has many telephones, the
loops will be carried on a single fiber
optic loop carrier system between the
buildings.
Traditional PBX and Centrex...

Key System
✗ A key telephone system is a low-
capacity, low-budget combination
of centrex and PBX functions.
✗ A key system terminates lines from
the phone company, not trunks, but
like a PBX, allows the connection
of more phones than there are
lines.
✗ A 3 x 8 key system would support
up to 8 telephones in a building
connected to one of 3 phone lines.
 SIP, Soft Switches, Hosted PBX & 
IP Centrex
Soft Switches
✗ In the VoIP world, access circuits are
not terminated on a switch, & the
voice communications do not flow
through a switch.
✗ VoIP telephones are connected to a
LAN and the digitized voice is carried
in IP packets over the LAN. No line
cards are required on a VoIP switch.
✗ If all the line cards are removed from
a “hard” switch, what remains is the
“soft” part, which is the software that
performs call setup functions.
✗ A business customer can
physically implement the software
on a computer at the customer
premise, or can outsource this to a
third party who implements the
software that is the softswitch on a
computer at a remote location.
✗ There are many terms used for
soft switches. Most VoIP systems
support the Session Initiation
Protocol (SIP), uses the terms
proxy or back-to-back user agent.
SIP, Soft Switches, Hosted PBX & IP 
Centrex...
✗
Terms used by product manufacturers SIP
include call manager, call server, VoIP ✗
switch, communication server, and
hosted PBX.
✗
Regardless of what it is called, the
main function of a sofswitch is call
setup: inform the telephone at each
end of the call of the other telephones
IP address, since the voice goes in IP
packets.
During a VoIP call, the telephones send IP
packets containing digitized speech directly
to each other. Telephones must know each
other’s IP address. The SIP protocol is
used to inform the telephones of each
other’s IP address. Each phone is
associated with a SIP server.
✗ Instead of a telephone number, each
person has an Address of Record, which in
the SIP standard has the same format as
an email address; but for interoperability
with traditional systems, the AoR might be
translated behind the scenes by SIP to a
traditional telephone number.
SIP, Soft Switches, Hosted PBX & IP 
Centrex...
✗ To establish a call from A to B,
caller A asks their SIP server to
initiate the call to B’s Address of
Record. A’s SIP server looks up
the IP address of B’s SIP server in
the DNS, then sends a session
initiation request to B’s SIP server.
✗ Since telephone B previously
registered with B’s SIP server, it
knows the IP address of telephone
B. B’s SIP server then passes on
the incoming call request to B’s
telephone.
SIP, Soft Switches, Hosted PBX & IP 
Centrex...
✗ If B indicates to B’s SIP server that
they will take the call, B’s server
transmits the IP address of
telephone B to A’s SIP server,
which in turn relays it to A’s
telephone.
✗ At that point, the two telephones
can send IP packets (called media
communication in SIP) directly to
one another , and the SIP servers
are no longer involved.
SIP, Soft Switches, Hosted PBX & IP 
Centrex...
Additional Functions Location Independence
✗
In addition to running a SIP server for call ✗ The softswitch may be located anywhere, at
setup, the softswitch may also perform the customer premise, at a telephone
authentication, authorization and company building, or at some third party
accounting functions such as generation of data center.
Call Detail Records; other processing
functions such as voice mail, integrated
messaging, call pickup groups, IVR and Customer Premise Softswitch
ACD ✗
When the hardware and software
implementing the softswitch is located at the
customer premise, it is usually called a
softswitch, call manager, unified
communications system or IP phone system.
SIP, Soft Switches, Hosted PBX & IP 
Centrex...
Centrex
✗
When the hardware and software implementing
the softswitch is located at a telephone company,
its functions are provided as a service by the
telco, and might be called IP Centrex or Hosted
VoIP by the telephone company’s marketing
department.

Hosted PBX
✗
When the hardware and software implementing
the softswitch is located at a third party, its
functions are provided as a service by the third
party and is usually called a Hosted PBX, similar
in concept to webhosting.
SIP, Soft Switches, Hosted PBX & IP 
Centrex...
Additional Functions Location Independence
✗
In addition to running a SIP server for call ✗ The softswitch may be located anywhere, at
setup, the softswitch may also perform the customer premise, at a telephone
authentication, authorization and company building, or at some third party
accounting functions such as generation of data center.
Call Detail Records; other processing
functions such as voice mail, integrated
messaging, call pickup groups, IVR and Customer Premise Softswitch
ACD ✗
When the hardware and software
implementing the softswitch is located at the
customer premise, it is usually called a
softswitch, call manager, unified
communications system or IP phone system.
 SIP TRUNKING
✗
In days past, traditional business
telephone systems (PBXs) were
connected to the outside world by PBX
trunks from the customer premise to
the local phone company (Local
Exchange Carrier, LEC), which would
then provide switched access to a long
-distance company (Inter-Exchange
Carrier, IXC), to connect to a far-end
LEC ang far-end customer to complete
a call.
✗
This is being replaced with IP packet-
based services to communicate SIP
call setup messages and digitized
speech between VoIP telephones in
one building and VoIP telephones in
another building. This called SIP
trunking services by the telco
marketing department.
SIP TRUNKING...
PBX Trunks and Tie Lines
✗
In medium and large installations,
traditional PBX trunks were
implemented with ISDN PRI technology
(64 kb/s DS0 rate on channels)
✗
Also, in days past, tie lines were
services directly linked the customer’s
PBXs in different cities.
VoIP Trunking
✗
In the early days of VoIP, a business
could implement VoIP on LANs in-
building, but there were no carrier
services with performance guarantees
suitable for moving IP packets between
buildings.
✗
Voice calls had to be converted to
traditional telephony, that is PBX trunks
carried on ISDN PRI connections to the
LEC, for phone calls to other locations,
then convert them back to VoIP at the
other end.
SIP TRUNKING...
✗
This was in essence islands of VoIP
connected with the “old” circuit-
switched technology.
✗
Now carriers offer IP connectivity for
customer VoIP systems, which can be
used for VoIP calls between two
locations of the same business in
different cities, and VoIP calls to the
PSTN.
SIP TRUNKING...

Gateway Service ✗
To accomlish this, the carrier
providing the SIP trunking service
✗
At present there are no agreements for
terminating a VoIP call on a LEC for may also provide a gateway
subsequent delivery to one of the service, to convert the phone call
LEC’s customers. from VoIP to traditional telephony.
✗
In the case of VoIP calls from a
business VoIP system to the PSTN, for
example, phoning from work to home,
conversion of VoIP to traditional
telephony is needed to hand the call off
to a LEC.
 ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

The “Cloud” and Service  VoIP System Components
Provisioning
 THE CLOUD AND SERVICE 
PROVISIONING
✗
Any service provided by a telecommunications – ISDN BRI digital telephone lines at 128
service provider is made up of three kb/s,
components: access, network connection, and
billing agreement.
– xDSL technology at 1 – 200 Mb/s,
✗
Access circuits are physical lines with circuit-
– Cable modem technology at 1 – 500
terminating equipment at each end. These Mb/s or more,
lines run from a user’s site to the nearest – Passive Optical Networks at 1 Gb/s or
physical attachment point usually a CO. more,
✗
Different technologies for access circuits, – T1 digital access circuits at 1.5 Mb/s,
include:
– Cellular and point-to-point radio,
– Plain Ordinary Telephone Service (POTS)
lines, – SONET/SDH fiber-based circuits based
around 45 Mb/s,
– Older-style digital data circuits at up to 56
kb/s, – Optical Ethernet from 1 to 100 Gb/s.
Each type of access circuit must have a specific
type of Data Circuit-terminating Equipment ●
Network connections between the
(DCE): access circuits are made over high
– Small Formfactor Pluggable (SFP) optical capacity circuits that are owned by the
transceivers for fiber, network service provider. Methods of
– LAN Network Interfaces: copper, fiber and connection:
wireless implementations, – Full period
– Modems for wireless, DSL, cable modem
and POTS, – Circuit-switched
– Data Service Units (DSUs), for old 56 kb/s – Bandwidth on Demand or packet-
non-switched digital circuits, switched
– Channel Service Units (CSUs), used on T1
circuits,
– CSU/DSUs, used on switched-56 kb/s
circuits,
– Optical Network Units (ONUs), Optical
Network Terminals (ONTs), and Optical Line
Terminals (OLTs) used on fiber circuits.
 THE CLOUD AND SERVICE 
PROVISIONING
✗
Any service provided by a telecommunications – ISDN BRI digital telephone lines at 128
service provider is made up of three kb/s,
components: access, network connection, and
billing agreement.
– xDSL technology at 1 – 200 Mb/s,
✗
Access circuits are physical lines with circuit-
– Cable modem technology at 1 – 500
terminating equipment at each end. These Mb/s or more,
lines run from a user’s site to the nearest – Passive Optical Networks at 1 Gb/s or
physical attachment point usually a CO. more,
✗
Different technologies for access circuits, – T1 digital access circuits at 1.5 Mb/s,
include:
– Cellular and point-to-point radio,
– Plain Ordinary Telephone Service (POTS)
lines, – SONET/SDH fiber-based circuits based
around 45 Mb/s,
– Older-style digital data circuits at up to 56
kb/s, – Optical Ethernet from 1 to 100 Gb/s.
THE CLOUD AND SERVICE 
PROVISIONING...
The Network “Cloud”
✗
From a network planning engineer’s
point of view, the network has
historically had two parts: the core
and the edge.
✗
The core consists of high capacity
fiber circuits connecting COs within a
city or connecting cities together.
✗
The regional rings are
interconnected at multiple places to
ensure high availability.
THE CLOUD AND SERVICE 
PROVISIONING...
●
Historically, the Automatic Protection
Switching, i.e. managing the
redundancy, alarms, and service
restoration after a cut line, has been
implemented with SONET.
●
Going forward, Optical Ethernet and
Resilient Packet Rings are used to
implenet a core that moves everything
in IP packets and Ethernet frames.
THE CLOUD AND SERVICE 
PROVISIONING...
✗
To connect the customers’ access circuits ✗ For business customers, the same Optical
and lower-bit-rate services to the core fiber Ethernet technology used on the core will
ring, edge equipment is provisioned at each be used on the access.
station on the ring.
✗
For residential customers, the existing
✗
Edge equipment is connected in pairs across copper entrance cable will be used for
the ring; it acts as a data concentrator, and some time to come, so the edge
as a converter between access circuit equipment will route packets between DSL
technology (e.g. copper wires or lower-speed
modems and copper wires on the low-
fiber) and the fiber-optic core technology.
speed (customer) side and the fiber core
✗
There are three basic kinds of edge on the aggregate (network) side.
equipment: multiplexer, telephone switch and
router.
✗
In the future, there will be only one kind of
network service: IP packets carried in
Ethernet frames, and so the switches and
multiplexers will disappear and only routers
will be used for the data concentration
function.
THE CLOUD AND SERVICE 
PROVISIONING...
Network Equipment
✗ These three types of equipment are used to aggregate
✗ A router doesn’t establish connections, and
low-speed services onto a high-speed backbone. doesn’t reserve capacity for a particular user.
Routers are stateless devices that treat each
✗ Detailed Notes: packet they receive individually. At a network
✗ A multiplexer is a dumb device. One has to plug in service provider, the packets come in on low
cards, wire up circuits, then sit down at a speed access circuits and go out on the next
management terminal and tell it which input goes available spot on a high-speed backbone.
on which channel on the output. These are used for Routers are used for bandwidth on demand
establishing full-period services, which are often
services like Internet service and commercial
also called dedicated lines, private lines or leased
lines. Multiplexers reserve capacity on the
IP packet communication services.
backbone for a user all the time. A cross-connect is ✗
The question of reserving capacity or not can be
like a multiplexer, except that it has the same “high
described by full-period (muxes) vs. circuit-
speed” circuit on both sides. The cross-connect
can move a channel in one circuit to a different
switching (switches) vs bandwidth on demand
channel in the other. (routers). This all boils down to channelized vs.
statistical multiplexing of portions of the
✗ A switch is smarter. A switch has a processor backbone.
running software capable of recognizing requests
from users to establish a connection, and to
release it. A switch can reserve capacity for a user
on the backbone on a per call basis. These are
used for circuit-switched services like POTS and
ISDN.
THE CLOUD AND SERVICE 
PROVISIONING...
✗
To summarize, services are
provisioned, that is put in place,
with an access circuit at each end,
a network connection accross the
“backbone” or core, and the edge
equipment connecting the access
circuits to the core.
THE CLOUD AND SERVICE 
PROVISIONING...
✗
Services are generally provided on
copper or fiber access circuits. Since
the network core runs at more than 10
Gb/s, a method of putting the lower
speed service provided to the user onto
the backbone is required.
✗
The edge equipment is used to perform
this function. The type of edge
equipment used depends on the type
of network connection desired.
✗
Full period connections use a multiplexer; Circuit-
switched connections use a telephone switch;
Packet-switched connections use a router
✗
In the past, the network core was chanellized,
using SONET or SDH, and routers directed data
packets onto dedicated channels alongside
channels carrying voice trunks and dedicated
lines.
Nowadays, the network core is packetized,
✗
moving IP packets in Ethernet frames. All traffic:
voice, data, video, Internet traffic and anything
else is placed in IP packets and interspersed with
other users’ packets on the core. Routers forward
packets from the access circuits to the core and
from the core to the access circuits.
 VoIP System Components

A VoIP system includes terminals, LAN

infrastructure, a softswitch, voicemail
server, router, gateway, firewall and
network connections.
✗
VoIP Phones and Other VoIP Terminals
Terminals, including both dedicated-
purpose IP telephones as well as soft
phones, which are software applications
running on general-purpose computers
using Windows, Android and other
operating systems.
✗
Another type of terminal is a voicemail
server, which may be called an Integrated
Messaging System if it handles multiple
different types of messages like voice,
email, short text messages, fax, and
supports functions like voice-to-text and
text-to-voice.
✗ Physical Connections: Wired and Wireless
LANs
✗ Another component of a VoIP system is the
physical connections, implemented with
LAN infrastructure, consisting of LAN
cabling or wireless LANs, and LAN
switches.
✗ Softswitch
– The softswitch, also called a SIP proxy or
call manager. Its main function is to assist in
call setup. The softswitch also manages
terminals, regulates admission to the VoIP
system and provides terminal
authentication, registration, status and
address resolution as well as call control.
✗ Router The router connects LAN
segments, properly called LAN broadcast
domains, to each other within the building,
and to external connections, including to
the circuit-switched PSTN, the Internet,
VPN services and SIP trunking services
that move VoIP phone calls long distance.
✗
Gateway Gateways perform format
conversions. This includes both coding
format and signaling format conversions
between the IP world and the circuit-
switched PSTN.
✗
Firewall A firewall system is required to manage
connections to other IP networks, which include:
– The Internet, which allows any
communications to anywhere but with no
performance guarantees,
– Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), which allow
any communications to specific locations
(e.g. other locations of an organization), and
may include performance guarantees, and
– SIP trunking, which carries VoIP to specific
locations in native format, with performance
guarantees suitable for telephone calls, and
may include gateway service to convert VoIP
to traditional telephony for calls terminating
on the PSTN.