TELEPHONE EXCHANGE………

When it comes to a discussion of telecommunications, referring to a telephone exchange may be used in a couple of
different ways. One usage refers to specific forms of telephone equipment, while the second has to do with the use of
telephone exchange as a term of designation. Here is some information about both applications of the phrase “telephone
exchange.”

As a reference to telephony equipment, a telephone exchange is often also called a telephone switch. Originally, the
telephone exchange was created as a means of a provider receiving and inbound phone signal, interacting with a subscriber
and then switching the signal to whomever the subscriber wished to speak with. This was referred to early on in the history
of telephony as exchanging a call.

Over time, the process for telephone exchanges became more complicated, as technological advances allowed for the
creation of telephone exchanges that would allow calls to be routed from a local exchange to an exchange in neighboring
cities, states and ultimately to international locations. The creation of switching overlays that worked in conjunction with
the local exchanges led to the creation of the term “telephone switch.”

The first hints of the automatic switching to come came in 1891, with the creation of the stepping switch. A stepping
switch allowed for the first real automation, which involved being able to reach subscribers in the immediate area by using
a telephone dial to signal a four number sequence. This allowed the phone exchange operators to focus on exchanging
inbound and outbound signals that needed to be processed outside a local calling area. However, the stepping switch
helped with the designation of the terminating number, as the caller could ask the operator to connect the call to a
neighborhood and then give the four digit number for the subscriber in that neighborhood.

In time, the term “telephone exchange” came to also be associated with the actual location and number designation for an
individual subscriber. The four digit number referred to a local telephone exchange within the city or town, while the
addition of the name of the neighborhood calling area added to the front end of the numbers allowed operators to switch a
call from another telephone switch into the local area.

Eventually, the procedure of using both proper names and a number sequence became extremely complicated, and many
areas began to switch to three digit number prefixes to replace the older neighborhood designations. Since the 1960s, all
areas of the United States now use a local seven digit calling plan for local calls within the area, and have the ability to dial
the numbers directly through an automatic switch.

In time, the creation of area codes were added to the overall telephone exchange designation, allowing for direct dial of
both national and international long distance calls, with no operator intervention. While the amount of numbers used in the
dialing plans of various countries varies, all of them now use numeric telephone exchanges, with no use of letters to access
any point around the world.

Telephone exchange
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A telephone operator manually connecting calls with cord pairs at a telephone switchboard.

In the field of telecommunications, a telephone exchange or telephone switch is a system of

electronic components that connects telephone calls. A central office is the physical building
used to house inside plant equipment including telephone switches, which make telephone calls
"work" in the sense of making connections and relaying the speech information.

The term exchange area can be used to refer to an area served by a particular switch, but is
typically known as a wire center in the US telecommunications industry. The exchange code or
Central Office Code refers to the first three digits of the local number (NXX). It is sometimes
confused with the area code (NPA). In the United States, local exchange areas together make up
a legal entity called local access and transport areas (LATA) under the Modification of Final
Judgment (MFJ).

Contents
[hide]

 1 Historic perspective
o 1.1 Number plan details
 2 Technologies
o 2.1 Manual service exchanges
o 2.2 Pre-digital automatic exchanges
 2.2.1 Electromechanical signaling
 2.2.2 Sounds
 2.2.3 Maintenance tasks
 2.2.4 Electronic switches
o 2.3 Digital switches
o 2.4 The switch's place in the system
 3 Switch design
 4 Switch control algorithms
o 4.1 Fully-connected mesh network
o 4.2 Clos's nonblocking switch algorithm
 5 Fault tolerance
 6 Internet exchanges
 7 See also
  8 Notes
 9 External links

[edit] Historic perspective

Tivadar Puskás, the inventor.

A Verizon Central Office in Lakeland, Florida at night.

An AT&T Central Office in Houston, Texas. The imprint of the old Bell System logo is visible.

Prior to the telephone, electrical switches were used to switch telegraph lines. One of the first
people to build a telephone exchange was Hungarian Tivadar Puskás in 1877 while he was
working for Thomas Edison. [1] [2] [3] [4] George W. Coy designed and built the first commercial
telephone exchange which opened in New Haven, Connecticut in January, 1878. The
switchboard was built from "carriage bolts, handles from teapot lids and bustle wire" and could
handle two simultaneous conversations .[5]

Later exchanges consisted of one to several hundred plug boards staffed by telephone operators.
Each operator sat in front of a vertical panel containing banks of ¼-inch tip-ring-sleeve (3-
conductor) jacks, each of which was the local termination of a subscriber's telephone line. In
front of the jack panel lay a horizontal panel containing two rows of patch cords, each pair
connected to a cord circuit. When a calling party lifted the receiver, a signal lamp near the jack
would light. The operator would plug one of the cords (the "answering cord") into the
subscriber's jack and switch her headset into the circuit to ask, "Number, please?" Depending
upon the answer, the operator might plug the other cord of the pair (the "ringing cord") into the
called party's local jack and start the ringing cycle, or plug into a trunk circuit to start what might
be a long distance call handled by subsequent operators in another bank of boards or in another
building miles away. In 1918, the average time to complete the connection for a long-distance
call was 15 minutes.[6] In the ringdown method, the originating operator called another
intermediate operator who would call the called subscriber, or passed it on to another
intermediate operator.[7] This chain of intermediate operators could complete the call only if
intermediate trunk lines were available between all the centers at the same time. In 1943 when
military calls had priority, a cross-country US call might take as long as 2 hours to request and
schedule in cities that used manual switchboards for toll calls.

On March 10, 1891, Almon Brown Strowger, an undertaker in Kansas City, Missouri, patented
the stepping switch, a device which led to the automation of telephone circuit switching. While
there were many extensions and adaptations of this initial patent, the one best known consists of
10 levels or banks, each having 10 contacts arranged in a semicircle. When used with a rotary
telephone dial, each pair of digits caused the shaft of the central contact "hand" of the stepping
switch to first step (ratchet) up one level for each pulse in the first digit and then to swing
horizontally in a contact row with one small rotation for each pulse in the next digit.

Later stepping switches were arranged in banks, the first stage of which was a linefinder. If one
of up to a hundred subscriber lines had the receiver lifted "off hook", a linefinder connected the
subscriber's line to a free first selector, which returned the subscriber a dial tone to show that it
was ready to receive dialed digits. The subscriber's dial pulsed at about 10 pulses per second,
although the speed depended on the standard of the particular telephone administration.

Exchanges based on the Strowger switch were eventually challenged by other exchange types
and later by crossbar technology. These exchange designs promised faster switching and would
accept pulses faster than the Strowger's typical 10 pps—typically about 20 pps. At a later date
many also accepted DTMF "touch tones" or other tone signaling systems.

A transitional technology (from pulse to DTMF) had DTMF link finders which converted DTMF
to pulse, to feed to older Strowger, panel, or crossbar switches. This technology was used as late
as mid 2002.
[edit] Number plan details

See Telephone number

[edit] Technologies
This article will use the terms:

 manual service for a condition where a human operator routes calls inside an exchange
and a dial is not used
 dial service for an exchange where calls are routed by a switch interpreting dialed digits
 telephone exchange for the building housing the switching equipment
 telephone switch for the switching equipment
 concentrator for a device that concentrates traffic, be it remote or co-located with the
switch
 off-hook for a tip condition or to describe a circuit that is in use (i.e., when a phone call is
in progress)
 on-hook for an idle circuit (i.e., no phone call is in progress)
 wire center for the area served by a particular switch or central office

Many of the terms in this article have conflicting UK and US usages.

 central office originally referred to switching equipment and its operators. Now it is used
generally for the building housing switching and related inside plant equipment.
 telephone exchange means an exchange building in the UK, and is also the UK name for
a telephone switch, and also has a legal meaning in U.S. telecoms.
 telephone switch is the U.S. term, but is in increasing use in technical UK telecoms
usage, to make the CO/switch/concentrator distinction clear.

[edit] Manual service exchanges

1924 PBX switchboard

With manual service, the customer lifts the receiver off-hook and asks the operator to connect
the call to a requested number. Provided that the number is in the same central office, the
operator connects the call by plugging into the jack on the switchboard corresponding to the
called customer's line. If the call is to another central office, the operator plugs into the trunk for
the other office and asks the operator answering (known as the "inward" operator) to connect the
call.

Most urban exchanges were common-battery, meaning that the central office provided power for
the telephone circuits, as is the case today. In common-battery systems, the pair of wires from a
subscriber's telephone to the switch (or manual exchange) carry -48VDC (nominal) from the
telephone company end, across the conductors. The telephone presents an open circuit when it is
on-hook or idle. When the subscriber goes off-hook, the telephone puts a DC resistance short
across the line. In manual service, this current flowing through the off-hook telephone flows
through a relay coil actuating a buzzer and lamp on the operator's switchboard. The buzzer and
lamp would tell an operator the subscriber was off-hook (requesting service).[8]

In the largest U.S. cities, it took many years to convert every office to automatic equipment, such
as panel switches. During this transition period, it was possible to dial a manual number and be
connected without requesting an operator's assistance. This was because the policy of the Bell
System was that customers should not need to know if they were calling a manual or automated
office. If a subscriber dialed a manual number, an inward operator would answer the call, see the
called number on a display device, and manually connect the call. For instance, if a customer
calling from TAylor 4725 dialed a manual number, ADams 1233, the call would go through,
from the subscriber's perspective, exactly as a call to LEnnox 5813, in an automated exchange.
In contrast to the common-battery system, smaller towns with manual service often had
magneto, or crank, phones. Using a magneto set, the subscriber turned a crank to generate
ringing current, to gain the operator's attention. The switchboard would respond by dropping a
metal tab above the subscriber's line jack and sounding a buzzer. Dry cell batteries (normally two
large "No 6" cells) in the subscriber's telephone provided the DC power for conversation.
Magneto systems were in use in one American small town, Bryant Pond, Woodstock, Maine as
late as 1983. In general, this type of system had a poorer call quality compared to common-
battery systems.

Many small town magneto systems featured party lines, anywhere from two to ten or more
subscribers sharing a single line. When calling a party, the operator would use a distinctive
ringing signal sequence, such as two long rings followed by one short. Everyone on the line
could hear the rings, and of course could pick up and listen in if they wanted. On rural lines
which were not connected to a central office (thus not connected to the outside world),
subscribers would crank the correct sequence of rings to reach their party.

[edit] Pre-digital automatic exchanges

A rural telephone exchange building in Australia

Automatic exchanges, or dial service, came into existence in the early 1900s. Their purpose
was to eliminate the need for human telephone operators. Before the exchanges became
automated, operators had to complete the connections required for a telephone call. Almost
everywhere, operators have been replaced by computerized exchanges. A telephone switch is
the brains of an automatic exchange. It is a device for routing calls from one telephone to
another, generally as part of the public switched telephone network.

The local exchange automatically senses an off hook (tip) telephone condition, provides dial tone
to that phone, receives the pulses or DTMF tones generated by the phone, and then completes a
connection to the called phone within the same exchange or to another distant exchange.

The exchange then maintains the connection until a party hangs up, and the connection is
disconnected. This tracking of a connection's status is called supervision. Additional features,
such as billing equipment, may also be incorporated into the exchange.
In Bell System dial service, a feature called automatic number identification (ANI) was
implemented. ANI allowed services like automated billing, toll-free 800-numbers, and 9-1-1
service. In manual service, the operator knows where a call is originating by the light on the
switchboard's jack field. In early dial service, ANI did not exist. Long distance calls would go to
an operator queue and the operator would ask the calling party's number, then write it on a paper
toll ticket. See also Automatic Message Accounting.

Early exchanges used motors, shaft drives, rotating switches and relays. In a sense, switches
were relay-logic computers. Some types of automatic exchanges were Strowger (also known as
Step-By-Step), All Relay, X-Y, Panel and crossbar. These are referred to collectively as
electromechanical switches.

[edit] Electromechanical signaling

Main article: Signalling (telecommunications)

Circuits connecting two switches are called trunks. Before Signalling System 7, Bell System
electromechanical switches in the United States communicated with one another over trunks
using a variety of DC voltages and signaling tones. It would be rare to see any of these in use
today.

Some signalling communicated dialed digits. An early form called Panel Call Indicator Pulsing
used quaternary pulses to set up calls between a panel switch and a manual switchboard.
Probably the most common form of communicating dialed digits between electromechanical
switches was sending dial pulses, equivalent to a rotary dial's pulsing, but sent over trunk circuits
between switches. In Bell System trunks, it was common to use 20 pulse-per-second between
crossbar switches and crossbar tandems. This was twice the rate of Western Electric/Bell System
telephone dials. Using the faster pulsing rate made trunk utilization more efficient because the
switch spent half as long listening to digits. DTMF was not used for trunk signaling. Multi-
frequency (MF) was the last of the pre-digital methods. It used a different set of tones sent in
pairs like DTMF. Dialing was preceded by a special keypulse (KP) signal and followed by a start
(ST). Variations of the Bell System MF tone scheme became a CCITT standard. Similar schemes
were used in the Americas and in some European countries including Spain. Digit strings
between switches were often abbreviated to further improve utilization. For example, one switch
might send only the last four or five digits of a telephone number. In one case, seven digit
numbers were preceded by a digit 1 or 2 to differentiate between two area codes or office codes,
(a two-digit-per-call savings). This improved revenue per trunk and reduced the number of digit
receivers needed in a switch. Every task in electromechanical switches was done in big metallic
pieces of hardware. Every fractional second cut off of call set up time meant fewer racks of
equipment to handle call traffic.

Examples of signals communicating supervision or call progress include E and M signaling, SF

signaling, and robbed-bit signaling. In physical (not carrier) E and M trunk circuits, trunks were
four wire. Fifty trunks would require a hundred pair cable between switches, for example.
Conductors in one common circuit configuration were named tip, ring, ear (E) and mouth (M). In
two-way trunks with E and M signaling, a handshake took place to prevent both switches from
colliding by dialing calls on the same trunk at the same time. By changing the state of these leads
from ground to -48 volts, the switches stepped through a handshake protocol. Using DC voltage
changes, the local switch would send a signal to get ready for a call and the remote switch would
reply with an acknowledgment to go ahead with dial pulsing. This was done with relay logic and
discrete electronics. These voltage changes on the trunk circuit would cause pops or clicks that
were audible to the subscriber as the electrical handshaking stepped through its protocol. Another
handshake, to start timing for billing purposes, caused a second set of clunks when the called
party answered. A second common form of signaling for supervision was called single-
frequency or SF signaling. The most common form of this used a steady 2,600 Hz tone to
identify a trunk as idle. Trunk circuitry hearing a 2,600 Hz tone for a certain duration would go
idle. (The duration requirement reduced falsing). Some systems used tone frequencies over
3,000 Hz, particularly on SSB frequency division multiplex microwave radio relays. On T-
carrier digital transmission systems, bits within the T-1 data stream were used to transmit
supervision. By careful design, the appropriated bits did not change voice quality appreciably.
Robbed bits were translated to changes in contact states (opens and closures) by electronics in
the channel bank hardware. This allowed direct current E and M signaling, or dial pulses, to be
sent between electromechanical switches over a digital carrier which did not have DC continuity.

[edit] Sounds

Step-by-step call

Subscribers hear a different-sounding dialtone in a step-

by-step call.

Problems listening to this file? See media help.

A characteristic of electromechanical switching equipment is that the maintenance staff could

hear the mechanical clattering of Strowgers, panel switches or crossbar relays. Most Bell System
central offices were housed in reinforced concrete buildings with concrete ceilings and floors. In
rural areas, some smaller switching facilities, such as Community Dial Offices (CDOs), were
sometimes housed in prefabricated metal buildings. These facilities almost always had concrete
floors. The hard surfaces reflected sounds.

During heavy use periods, it could be difficult to converse in a central office switch room due to
the clatter of calls being processed in a large switch. For example, on Mother's Day in the US, or
on a Friday evening around 5pm, the metallic rattling could make raised voices necessary. For
wire spring relay markers these noises resembled hail falling on a metallic roof.

On a pre-dawn Sunday morning, call processing might slow to the extent that one might be able
to hear individual calls being dialed and set up. There were also noises from whining power
inverters and whirring ringing generators. Some systems had a continual, rhythmic "clack-clack-
clack" from wire spring relays that made reorder (120 ipm) and busy (60 ipm) signals. In Bell
System installations, there were typically alarm bells, gongs, or chimes. These would annunciate
alarms calling attention to a failed switch element. Another noisemaker: a trouble reporting card
system was connected to switch common control elements. These trouble reporting systems
would puncture cardboard cards with a code that logged the nature of a failure. Remreed
technology in Stored Program Control exchanges finally quieted the environment.

[edit] Maintenance tasks

The maintenance of electromechanical systems was partly DC electricity and partly mechanical
adjustments. Unlike modern switches, a circuit connecting a dialed call through an
electromechanical switch actually had DC continuity. The talking path was a physical, metallic
one.

In all systems, subscribers were not supposed to notice changes in quality of service because of
failures or maintenance work. A variety of tools referred to as make-busys were plugged into
electromechanical switch elements during repairs or failures. A make-busy would identify the
part being worked on as in-use, causing the switching logic to route around it. A similar tool was
called a TD tool. Subscribers who got behind in payments would have their service temporarily
denied (TDed). This was effected by plugging a tool into the subscriber's office equipment
(Crossbar) or line group (step). The subscriber could receive calls but could not dial out.

Strowger-based, step-by-step offices in the Bell System were under continual maintenance. They
required constant cleaning. Indicator lights on equipment bays in step offices alerted staff to
conditions such as blown fuses (usually white lamps) or a permanent signal (stuck off-hook
condition, usually green indicators.) Step offices were more susceptible to single-point failures
than newer technologies.

Crossbar offices used more shared, common control circuits. For example, a digit receiver (part
of an element called an Originating Register) would be connected to a call just long enough to
collect the subscriber's dialed digits. Crossbar architecture was more flexible than step offices.
Later crossbar systems had punch-card-based trouble reporting systems. By the 1970s, automatic
number identification had been retrofitted to nearly all step-by-step and crossbar switches in the
Bell System.

[edit] Electronic switches

The first Electronic Switching Systems were not entirely digital. The Western Electric 1ESS
switch had reed relay metallic paths which were stored-program-controlled. Equipment testing,
changes to phone numbers, circuit lockouts and similar tasks were accomplished by typing on a
terminal. Northern Telecom SP1, Ericsson AKE, Philips PRX/A, ITT Metaconta, British
Telecom TXE series and several other designs were similar. These systems could use the old
electromechanical signaling methods inherited from crossbar and step-by-step switches. They
also introduced a new form of data communications: two 1ESS exchanges could communicate
with one another using a data link called Common Channel Interoffice Signaling, (CCIS). This
data link was based on CCITT 6, a predecessor to SS7.

[edit] Digital switches

A typical satellite PBX with front cover removed.

Digital switches work by connecting two or more digital circuits together, according to a dialed
telephone number. Calls are set up between switches using the Signalling System 7 protocol, or
one of its variants. In U.S. and military telecommunication, a digital switch is a switch that
performs time division switching of digitized signals.[9] This was first done in a few small and
little used systems. The first product using a digital switch system was made by Amtelco.
Prominent examples include Nortel DMS-100, Lucent 5ESS switch, Siemens EWSD and
Ericsson AXE telephone exchange. With few exceptions, most switches built since the 1980s are
digital. This article describes digital switches, including algorithms and equipment.

A digital exchange (Nortel DMS-100) used by an operator to offer local and long distance
services in France. Each switch typically serves 10,000-100,000+ subscribers depending on the
geographic area

Digital switches encode the speech going on, in 8000 time slices per second. At each time slice, a
digital PCM representation of the tone is made. The digits are then sent to the receiving end of
the line, where the reverse process occurs, to produce the sound for the receiving phone. In other
words, when you use a telephone, you are generally having your voice "encoded" and then
reconstructed for the person on the other end. Your voice is delayed in the process by a small
fraction of one second — it is not "live", it is reconstructed — delayed only minutely. (See below
for more info.)

Individual local loop telephone lines are connected to a remote concentrator. In many cases, the
concentrator is co-located in the same building as the switch. The interface between remote
concentrators and telephone switches has been standardised by ETSI as the V5 protocol.
Concentrators are used because most telephones are idle most of the day, hence the traffic from
hundreds or thousands of them may be concentrated into only tens or hundreds of shared
connections.
Some telephone switches do not have concentrators directly connected to them, but rather are
used to connect calls between other telephone switches. These complex machines (or a series of
them) in a central exchange building are referred to as "carrier-level" switches or tandems.

Some telephone exchange buildings in small towns now house only remote or satellite switches,
and are homed upon a "parent" switch, usually several kilometres away. The remote switch is
dependent on the parent switch for routing and number plan information. Unlike a digital loop
carrier, a remote switch can route calls between local phones itself, without using trunks to the
parent switch.

Telephone switches are usually owned and operated by a telephone service provider or carrier
and located in their premises, but sometimes individual businesses or private commercial
buildings will house their own switch, called a PBX, or Private branch exchange.

Map of the Wire Center locations in the US

Map of the Central Office locations in the US

[edit] The switch's place in the system

Telephone switches are a small part of a large network. The majority of work and expense of the
phone system is the wiring outside the central office, or the outside plant. In the middle 20th
century, each subscriber telephone number required an individual pair of wires from the switch
to the subscriber's phone. A typical central office may have tens-of-thousands of pairs of wires
that appear on terminal blocks called the main distribution frame or MDF. A component of the
MDF is protection: fuses or other devices that protect the switch from lightning, shorts with
electric power lines, or other foreign voltages. In a typical telephone company, a large database
tracks information about each subscriber pair and the status of each jumper. Before
computerization of Bell System records in the 1980s, this information was handwritten in pencil
in accounting ledger books.

To reduce the expense of outside plant, some companies use "pair gain" devices to provide
telephone service to subscribers. These devices are used to provide service where existing copper
facilities have been exhausted or by siting in a neighborhood, can reduce the length of copper
pairs, enabling digital services such as ISDN or DSL. Pair gain or digital loop carriers (DLCs)
are located outside the central office, usually in a large neighborhood distant from the CO. DLCs
are often referred to as Subscriber Loop Carriers (SLCs), after a Lucent proprietary product.

DLCs can be configured as universal (UDLCs) or integrated (IDLCs). Universal DLCs have two
terminals, a central office terminal (COT) and a remote terminal (RT), that function similarly.
Both terminals interface with analog signals, convert to digital signals, and transport to the other
side where the reverse is performed. Sometimes, the transport is handled by separate equipment.
In an Integrated DLC, the COT is eliminated. Instead, the RT is connected digitally to equipment
in the telephone switch. This reduces the total amount of equipment required. Several standards
cover DLCs, including Telcordia Technologies Generic Requirements documents GR-8-CORE
and GR-303-CORE.

Switches are used in both local central offices and in long distance centers. There are two major
types in the Public switched telephone network (PSTN):

1. Class 4 telephone switches designed for toll or switch-to-switch connections.

2. Class 5 telephone switches or subscriber switches, which manage connections from
subscriber telephones. Since the 1990s, hybrid Class 4/5 switching systems that serve
both functions have become common.

Another element of the telephone network is time and timing. Switching, transmission and
billing equipment may be slaved to very high accuracy 10 MHz standards which synchronize
time events to very close intervals. Time-standards equipment may include Rubidium- or
Caesium-based standards and a Global Positioning System receiver.

[edit] Switch design

Long distance switches may use a slower, more efficient switch-allocation algorithm than local
central offices, because they have near 100% utilization of their input and output channels.
Central offices have more than 90% of their channel capacity unused.
Traditional telephone switches connected physical circuits (e.g., wire pairs) while modern
telephone switches use a combination of space- and time-division switching. In other words,
each voice channel is represented by a time slot (say 1 or 2) on a physical wire pair (A or B). In
order to connect two voice channels (say A1 and B2) together, the telephone switch interchanges
the information between A1 and B2. It switches both the time slot and physical connection. To
do this, it exchanges data between the time slots and connections 8000 times per second, under
control of digital logic that cycles through electronic lists of the current connections. Using both
types of switching makes a modern switch far smaller than either a space or time switch could be
by itself.

The structure of a switch is an odd number of layers of smaller, simpler subswitches. Each layer
is interconnected by a web of wires that goes from each subswitch, to a set of the next layer of
subswitches. In most designs, a physical (space) switching layer alternates with a time switching
layer. The layers are symmetric, because in a telephone system callers can also be callees.

A time-division subswitch reads a complete cycle of time slots into a memory, and then writes it
out in a different order, also under control of a cyclic computer memory. This causes some delay
in the signal.

A space-division subswitch switches electrical paths, often using some variant of a nonblocking
minimal spanning switch, or a crossover switch.

[edit] Switch control algorithms

[edit] Fully-connected mesh network

One way is to have enough switching fabric to assure that the pairwise allocation will always
succeed by building a fully-connected mesh network. This is the method usually used in central
office switches, which have low utilization of their resources.

[edit] Clos's nonblocking switch algorithm

Main article: Nonblocking minimal spanning switch

The scarce resources in a telephone switch are the connections between layers of subswitches.
The control logic has to allocate these connections, and most switches do so in a way that is fault
tolerant. See nonblocking minimal spanning switch for a discussion of the Charles Clos
algorithm, used in many telephone switches, and a very important algorithm to the telephone
industry.

[edit] Fault tolerance

Composite switches are inherently fault-tolerant. If a subswitch fails, the controlling computer
can sense it during a periodic test. The computer marks all the connections to the subswitch as
"in use". This prevents new calls, and does not interrupt old calls that remain working. As calls
in progress end, the subswitch becomes unused, and new calls avoid the subswitch because it's
already "in use." Some time later, a technician can replace the circuit board. When the next test
succeeds, the connections to the repaired subsystem are marked "not in use," and the switch
returns to full operation.

To prevent frustration with unsensed failures, all the connections between layers in the switch
are allocated using first-in-first-out lists (queues). As a result, if a connection is faulty or noisy
and the customer hangs up and redials, they will get a different set of connections and
subswitches. A last-in-first-out (stack) allocation of connections might cause a continuing string
of very frustrating failures.

[edit] Internet exchanges

The telephone exchange concept has been adapted for use in Internet exchanges. Voice over IP
(VoIP) traffic may pass through both kinds of exchanges, depending on what kind of service the
caller and the called subscriber are using.

Telephone exchange information and planning system – A case study of

Vastrapur telephone exchange
Vanikar Y.V., Patel M.N., Kharod K. P., Matieda I.C
Geomatics Systems Division, Geomatics Group
Signal Image Information Processing Area,
Space Applications Centre, Ahmedabad

Department of Telecommunications is providing services to about three lakhs and odd subscribers in
Ahmedabad City and this demand will go on increasing with more and more people gaining awareness of
the benefits of being connected telephonically. The Ahmedabad Telecom area is divided into thirteen
telephone exchanges and a subscriber is attached to one of the several exchanges. The
telecommunications services have been computerised since about a decade and all this information is
maintained in tabular form. The spatial information is being maintained in carefully hand drawn maps
which are of several levels/kinds and innumerable. Whenever any changes are to be made in the
telephone cables like diverting a telephone cable to another nearby pillar or erecting a new pillar, a lot of
time is wasted in drawing the new maps or updating the already drawn maps. The personnel of the
telephone department also have to take into consideration the existing telephone facilities that have been
laid down i.e. they have to have the tabular information alongside while planning such changes. Hence, a
need has been felt to explore the possibility of transferring the map information in digital format and to
design and develop a software package to provide query based access using the available technology of
GIS; where the spatial and non-spatial data could reside under a common umbrella. This study will help in
exploring if the telecommunications services could be made more efficient in terms of rendering services
– existing and futuristic, and gaining more visibility to the planning issues faced by the
telecommunications department with a view to increase the efficiency, which would ultimately lead to
increase in the customer satisfaction.

In order to develop an approach, conceptualize the design and to examine the utility of the study it has
been decided to consider Vastrapur Exchange Area, which is a suburb in western part of Ahmedabad as
the pilot project area.

It is well understood that the personnel of Department of Telecommunications(DOT) need not be

burdened with understanding the jargons and the intricacies of GIS technology. Hence, a user-friendly
package is being designed and developed which will guide the technical personnel of DOT right from
database creation, linking of spatial and non-spatial data, generating the required network coverage and
querying different data to satisfy their management requirements. The customized package is being
developed using Arc/Info GIS and Visual C++ on a windows NT platform. This paper provides the
information on the design concepts and the functionality of the package.

Approach

Background
The Vastrapur exchange area lies to extreme west in Ahmedabad Telephone Exchange area. At present
the Vastrapur telephone Exchange caters service to more than 20,000 subscribers. Two main distribution
frames (MDF) are situated at the Vastrapur telephone exchange. About 22 pairs of leading-in (LI) cables
each having different capacities are laid down from the MDF in telephone exchange premises. Each
primary cable from the MDF in the telephone exchange, extend to one or gets distributed in two or more
pillars. The distribution cables originate from individual pillar and terminate into a number of distribution
points (DPs). These DPs extend connections to individual subscribers. Thus a telephone call is received
and sent through the network of MDF, primary cables, pillars, distributions cables, distribution points
overhead cables to the subscriber as shown in Figure 1. Also it is mandatory to lay down the primary
cables and pillars on public property only.

Objectives
Considering the above given facts and considering the requirements it was worked out that the prime
objective of this study would be:

 better handling of the map and attribute data and faster updating of spatial information
 estimate length and direction of cable network from one point to another point on the network for
the existing cable network.
 draw the route of a given lead-in cable and the associated pillars on the map.
 optimize cable network along the roads and estimate the length of the cable to be laid down.
 indicate number of working tags, waiting tags, utilized tags and percentage of filled tags in the
pillars from time to time.
 suggest new locations for erection of pillars for cable expansion
 generate fault/performance reports for lead-in cables, pillars and distribution points.

Database Organization
The database consists of spatial and non-spatial component. The spatial component includes coverages
like road, the locality map depicting the major localities of Vastrapur area to serve as reference coverage,
primary cable coverage and Pillar location coverage. The non-spatial component consists of subscriber’s
list( which includes detail of name, address, the associated pillar and the distribution point and his
address in MDF), pillar utilization data from time to time (this is being updated every quarter by the
telephone department), primary cable data with details on size, weight, tags etc. The spatial and non-
spatial data have been appropriately linked to generate the required information.

Methodology
The above mentioned data was received from the department of telecommunications. The maps are
available at 1:8000 scale. [Recently, we have also received locality map at 1:2400 surveyed and digitised
by M/S. Setu of Ahmedabad, which will be replaced by 1:8000 scale in near future]. These maps were
digitized, corrected and topology built where required. The methodology of database creation has been
represented as figure 2. In order to work out optimal planning of cables a cable network model and a road
network model has been developed in GIS environment. The modules which have been used from the
Arc/Info are mainly the ARCEDIT, ARCPLOT which includes the NETWORK module