Dire Dawa University

Dire Dawa Institute Of Technology

School Of Electrical & Computer Engineering

Chapter Two-Part two

Basics of Telecommunication Networks

Communication Stream
Outline
Chapter two-Part One
Local Access Network
Trunk Network
International Network
Telecommunications Networks
Network Management
Traffic Engineering

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Local Access Network
 The local-access network provides the connection between the customer’s
telephone and the local exchange.
 Ordinary telephone and ISDN subscribers use two wires, a pair, as a subscriber
loop, but for business customers a higher capacity optical fiber or microwave radio
link may be required.
 Many different technologies are used in a local-access network to connect
subscribers to the public telecommunications network.
 Most subscriber connections use twisted pairs of copper wires.
 An optical connection may also be used when a high transmission capacity or very
good transmission quality is required.
 One technology for implementation of ordinary subscriber loops for fixed
telephone service is known as wireless local loop (WLL).

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Figure : An example of a Local Access network 4
Cont.…
Local Exchange
Are the lowest-level exchanges in the switching hierarchy.
Subscriber loops connect subscribers to local exchanges.
The main tasks of local exchange:
Detect off-hook condition, analyze the dialed number, and determine if a route
is available.
 Connect the subscriber to a trunk exchange for longer distance calls.
 Connect the subscriber to another in the same local area.
 Determine if the called subscriber is free and connect ringing signal.
 Provide metering and collect charging data for its own subscribers.

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Cont.…
Distribution Frames
All subscriber lines are wired to the main distribution frame.
 MDF: is located close to the local exchange.
It is a large construction with huge number of connectors.
Subscriber pairs are connected to one side and pairs from the local exchange to
the other.
 ODF: optical distribution frame, contains two fields of optical fiber
connectors.
The optical cables of the network are connected to one connector field and the
other one is connected to optical line terminal equipment.
 DDF: digital distribution frame is a cross-connection system to which digital
interfaces from line systems and the exchange (or other network equipment)
are connected.

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Trunk Network

 Trunk exchanges are switches at higher levels than local exchanges.

 The local exchanges are connected to these trunk exchanges, which are linked to
provide a network of connections from any customer to any other subscriber in
the country.
 High-capacity transmission paths, usually optical line systems, with capacities up
to 10 Gbps, interconnect trunk exchanges.
 Note that a transport network has alternative routes and if one of these
transmission systems fails, switches are able to route new calls via other
transmission systems and trunk exchanges to bypass the failed system.

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Cont.…
Links between trunk and local exchanges:

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Cont.…

 The transmission systems that interconnect trunk exchanges make up a

transmission or transport network.
 Its basic purpose is simply to provide a required number of channels (or
data transmission capacity) from one exchange site to another.
 Exchanges use these channels of the transport network for calls that they
route from one exchange to another on subscriber demand.
 The trunk exchanges are usually located in major cities. They are digital
and use the international common channel signaling standard SS7 to
exchange routing and other signaling information between exchanges.

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International Network
 Each country has at least one international switching center to which trunk
exchanges are connected.
 Via this highest switching hierarchy level, international calls are connected from
one country to another and any subscriber is able to access any of the other more
than 2 billion subscribers around the world.
 High-capacity optical systems interconnect international exchanges or switching
centers of national networks.
 Submarine cables (coaxial cable or optical cable systems), microwave radio
systems, and satellites connect continental networks to make up the worldwide
telecommunications network.
 Submarine systems are the main paths for intercontinental telephone calls and
Internet communication.
 Satellite systems are sometimes used as backup systems in the case of congestion.
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Cont.…

The International Network 11

Telecommunications Networks

 We can divide telecommunications networks into categories in any of many different

ways.
 If we consider the customers of networks and the availability of services, there are
two broad categories:
Public networks and
Private or dedicated networks.

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Cont.…
Public Networks
 Public networks are owned and managed by telecoms network operators.
 These network operators have a license to provide telecoms services and that is
usually their core business.
 Any customer can be connected to the public telecoms network if he/she has the
correct equipment and an agreement with the network operator.
Examples of public networks:
Telephone Network: PSTN
Mobile Telephone Networks: Cellular
Telex Network: Telegraph
Paging Networks: Unidirectional
Public Data Networks
Internet
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Cont.…

Private or Dedicated Networks

 Are built and designed to serve the needs of particular organizations.
 They usually own and maintain the networks themselves.
 Services provided are a tailored mix of voice, data, and special control
information.
Examples:
Voice Communication Networks: Police radio
Data Communication Networks: dedicated networks especially designed for the
transmission of data between the offices of an organization. Banks, hotel chains, and
travel agencies, for example, have their own separate data networks to update and
distribute credit and reservation information.

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Cont.…

Virtual Private Networks

 It is very expensive for an organization to set up and maintain its own private
network.
 Another choice is to lease resources, which are also shared with other users,
from a public network operator.
 This virtual private network (VPN) provides a service similar to an ordinary
private network, but the systems in the network are the property of the network
operator.
 In effect, a VPN provides a dedicated network for the customer with the help of
public network equipment.

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Computer Network
 A network is a set of devices (often referred to as nodes) connected by
communication links.
 A node can be a computer, printer, or any other device capable of sending and/or
receiving data generated by other nodes on the network.
 A link can be a cable, air, optical fiber, or any medium which can transport a
signal carrying information.
 The computers that communicate have to understand each other, they have to
speak the same “language” and this common language is defined as a data
communication protocol.

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Cont.…
Protocol
A protocol is synonymous with rule.
It consists of a set of rules that govern data communications.
Each layer in one machine carries on a conversation with the corresponding layer
in another machine.
Protocol specifies the format and meaning of the information that a layer sends to
the layer below. This information is received and understood by the corresponding
layer at the other end if exactly the same detailed protocol specification is
implemented there.
Each protocol layer is completely independent of the other layers, and higher
layers do not have to concern themselves about how communications is actually
arranged by the lower layers.

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Cont.…
Layered Architecture
 We use the concept of layers in our
daily life.
 As an example, let us consider two
friends who communicate through
postal mail.
 The process of sending a letter to a
friend would be complex if there
were no services available from the
post office.
 In all networks, the purpose of each
layer is to offer certain services to
the higher layers, shielding those
layers from the details of how the
provided services are actually
implemented. 18
Network Management
The importance of network management has grown together with the size and
complexity of the telecommunications network.
Efficient network management is a key tool in helping a network operator
improve services and make them more competitive.
Network management responsibility is often divided hierarchically.
Local or site managers only take care of LAN networks at each office.
The main concerns of network managers of a company include:
Network change management (hardware updates)
The location and repair of malfunctions
Software updates and version control
Network security

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Traffic Engineering
 Traffic engineering is a key issue for telecommunications network operators trying
to keep customers (subscribers) happy while minimizing network investments.
 Network operators have to pay more and more attention to these aspects because
of increasing competition in the telecommunications services market.
 The capacity of the network (e.g., number of channels between exchanges,
exchange sizes, number of radio channels in a cellular network) should be
increased where the bottlenecks of the network are found.
 Therefore, the utilization of the network is continuously measured and traffic
demand in the future is estimated.
 Then, based on these estimates, the capacity of the network can be increased
before severe problems occur.

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Cont.…
Quality of Service (QoS
Quality of Service (QoS) in the field of telecommunications can be defined as
a set of specific requirements provided by a network to users, which are
necessary in order to achieve the required functionality of an application
(service).
It refers to the capability of a network to provide better service to selected
network traffic over various technologies.
Traffic scheduling mechanism is responsible for determining the order in
which packets are forwarded through the internal
Multiplexes of communication networks plays a crucial rule in achieving
differentiated QoS.
The primary goal of QoS is to provide priority including dedicated bandwidth,
and latency (required by some real-time and interactive traffic), and improved
loss characteristics.
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Cont.…
The users specify their performance requirements in form of QoS parameters
such as delay or packet loss.
Challenging situations that cause QoS to degrade can be:
Congestion: caused by traffic overflow (Bottlenecks)
Delays: caused by networking equipment low performance in large loads, as well
as caused by distance or retransmission of lost packets.
Shared communication channels: where collision and large delays become
common.
Limited bandwidth networks with poor capacity management.

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 Reading Assignments

 Telephone Call Routing

 Channel Associated Signaling (CAS)
 Common Channel Signaling (CCS)
 IN (Intelligent Network)

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Thank you