Check out more Central Offices from the Outside. (More tags in the singular sense)
Here are some pictures sent to me by one of my followers who asked to not be identified by name, but with this tight community, does everyone need to be identified everytime, all the time? 🙂 I did get permission to post these, and I want to keep the descriptions to a minimum. If you are accessing this from the home page, click to read more.
This was taken last fall at a local cable access facility whom I still have great rapport with. The story behind this image was bad luck hit the facility as they got flooded in a water main break last summer.
I should do a series on this specific Last Mile box because I’ve taken it when it’s been clearly open (and during the RBOC strike and people were caught tampering with them) and when loose wires the craftsman forgot to take with him.
Taken at a local oncology facility in March. Fortunately the person I was with got iron infusion, no chemo or what have you,
This was taken recently at Leda Lanes, the local candlepin bowling alley. Consult the link if you are not a local of Coastal New England. Anyways I’ve frequented the place for a number of years and since I’ve gone here I’ve seen their Avaya Partner system. Over a decade ago, they added on and an adjacent building is for the younger demographic with glow bowl setup and I’ve seen Partner sets tied ether via IROB or maybe the switch is there. Just after the exposure, the two lamps for probably a trunk and station went out.
Because you know an Allworks port is no different than any other Cat5e, LAN type of jack. It’s so special it needs it’s own drop despite it being a generic data port. Why? This install at an undisclosed location doesn’t have Layer 3 switching to allow VLANs. They are too smart to support MAC filtering ether. This Allworx install also lacks QOS. One time I called them to get jittery call quality. Don’t get me started with the ring tone that’s the call progress tone. (when you hear ring after you place a call?) Anyways with the drop, I can prolly plug in my MacBook and access the Internet without any difficulty ether!
I laugh at how I find 66 Blocks in random locations such as garage spaces in an industrial building…
Central Exchange (or Centrex) is a service provided by many telephone carriers to deliver PBX or Key-like services via the telephone company (or Telco.) Little to no hardware is required at the customer end, unless its special adjuncts for digital telephones for power, etc. Regardless of the hardware, the “brain” lives out in the “cloud” so to speak at the central office. If it’s a government, or a large corporation, rarely are these actually installed on site.
In this ten minute video you can see me build out the museum that took nearly six months from vision to completion. This timelapse video of nearly two full hours during two days in January and earlier this month showed how much work it took to put in the hardware bought from the local Home Depot using a Closetmaid solution as well as swapping out the telephone sets and finalizing the look.
More to come.
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In the mid 1990s, the then mobility unit of Motorola developed a mobile network entitled iDEN or the Integrated Digital Enhanced Network. The technology was very innovative and was intended for power users (such as small businesses and other Very Important People.) The network was one of the first modern digital based cell network before GSM or CDMA came to the masses. The project began in 1991 and it went to the market around 1994.
iDEN was widely popular in the United States from the mid to late 1990s into the mid to late 00s when Nextel (once known as Fleet Call) had commercially marketed the mobile phone solution that gave customers the ability to have multiple lines, digital cellular networking, use of data over the cellular and well an old fashioned technology called Push to Talk. iDEN was (and probably the only) the “fleet” grade of cell phones or networks much like how F or E series Ford vehicles are used for commercial grade and designed to be deployed to the masses in a corporation.
iDEN’s legacy would best be known for its Push to Talk service. Just like a walkie talkie, or two way radio, Nextel and other iDEN providers enabled group calling to another user or a group of people of how the PTT worked. (Oh and unlike radio, you couldn’t hit the PTT and cut someone off.) In the Nextel network, marketed as Direct Connect was limited to the locale of the market. Near it’s height around 2004, Nextel introduced a national Push to Talk Service where you can PTT another user at anywhere in the country.
During the BlackBerry craze from 2001 to the end of the decade, Research in Motion was able to license the iDEN protocol for the use on the BlackBerry at the time, with a Push to Talk functionality.
iDEN quickly became a legacy in American mobility. In 2005, Sprint made its intentions to buy Nextel and within a few years they stopped marketing the iDEN service and by mid 2013, all iDEN service was sunsetted. I guess corporate greed and bias towards 4G and LTE networks mixed with SIP technology was more important. iDEN is still well used outside of the country and independent iDEN providers in the United States can allow users to use iDEN sets. Some pundits claim the iDEN/PTT was the first mobile social network. Nextel had a well spread national iDEN network before being vaporized by Sprint.
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