This was taken recently at a local Books A Million. I first heard of them when I traveled to D.C. in 2002. They took over the space once held by Borders since they went bankrupt around 2009, specifically I am not sure because I do not frequent Concord.
Review: Polycom VVX 310 IP Phone
Happy Thanksgiving! I’m recovering from my dinner, and thought some updates were in order. Today I’m doing a review of these free to me Polycom VVX IP sets.
I found them at a local business that apparently moved. They were outside for “Free” so hey, why not?
These phones are an improvement from the SoundPoint IP sets that I still loathe to this day. Such improvements: you can adjust the set using a plastic thing on the back to three levels; second there is a tuck in space for the handset or headset cable. And BLFs most likely use the AUX jack and doesn’t do that infrared thing that I had doubted the reliability for a long time. Also in this range features wideband calling or high dynamic (HD) voice quality; and a backlit display (seen here) and a single LED with multi colors to show lamp status (or should I say in IT-speak “presence”?) and supports nearly 24 unique lines (or should I say “SIP sessions”?) It has cute screensavers too. If you want to see it, I have posted on my friends-only Instagram feed from mid October.
POTD: Avaya 6408D+ Digital “Telephone” | Attitash Grand Summit Resort | Bartlett, NH
I spotted this 6408D+ DCP telset at my last visit to the Attitash Grand Summit Resort in late October. This hotel off US302 is used mostly for conferences and skiers who want a vacation. This set was replaced in between a Labor Day week visit and the visit in late October. This area is a space for tourist information to help a customer find a place of interest. Previously (and years before) had a generic “trimline” like set. As previously posted, it appeared there was an upgrade of refurbished sets.
What would be nice given the decline of digital office telephony, that maybe digital sets could be seen in more locations in the facility or even in the rooms, despite Avaya and their BPs jacking up the maintenance costs of digital telephones in lieu of going to VOIP for no reason.
The 6400 series sets have been known unofficially to have a “European” look (but never claimed by Lucent or Avaya directly.) While Lucent introduced the line in the late 1990s, mass deployments occurred under Avaya tenure (spun-off late 2000.) The 6400 sets probably had a large friend count with the other models in the line. What do I mean? 6400 sets were often found in new deployments where a Definity or later MultiVantage systems would be setup. Because the 6400s were made around that time, other models like the 8400 was ether refurbished or not aggressively sold. It was not to say they couldn’t go in existing plants; just you’ll see them more obviously in new deployments after 2001.
These sets also introduced a mandatory two-wired setup (albeit with an RJ 45 jack) where a single pair of tip and ring would run on pins 4 & 5. Aux power would need two pairs with said T&R wire and another pair on pins 7 & 8 on an RJ 45 plug.
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POTD: New Hobby Lobby
This newer version of the NEC Electra Key Telephone was found at a local Hobby Lobby that had recently opened. Hobby Lobby is basically the K-Mart of arts and crafts stores. Their footprint is probably quadrupled compared to an AC Moore or Michaels. Coincidentally the stores that Hobby Lobby filled in my area were former KMart stores. Other stores in the area use this system.
Phone of the Day: Nearby Kohls | Undisclosed location
This was taken at a local Kohls, just a little north of where I live. This is located in massively redeveloped area of box stores when it was just all trees. I can’t remember when it was built, I’m going to bet before the 2009 bankruptcy of Nortel. (Remember a similar post of noticing Mitel sets of their alleged “Do we stand by our man?” post bankruptcy mentality across any former Nortel sites.) Newer stores went with the “screw them” approach of building new stores with Mitel and older stores still run Avaya Blue.
Rants: at&t Acquires TimeWarner (They THINK They Can)
AT&T (nee SBC, nee Southwestern Bell) dropped a story Friday evening while some of the East Coast was disrupted by the DDOS attack that they had intentions to acquire Time Warner, the owner of CNN (the Cheap News Network), HBO, Warner Pictures, etc. for about $85 billion dollars.
Of course, this is subject to approval by the Federal Communications Commission, and similar to the NBCUniversal/Comcast acquisition from GE in 2010; expect concessions and terms of sale to also follow.
This deal however, does not include Time Warner Cable (historically branded for it’s Road Runner triple play services) which was spun off several years ago, but kept the name and the “sight and sound” logo.
Video: AT&T Long Lines’ NOC Tour – 1979
Today, we are revisiting network operations from about thirty-five years ago. From time to time, this site had posted media from the old AT&T Long Lines, however on the day after a massive distributive denial of service attacked the Manchester-based Dyn; I thought it would be worthy to do another post. Produced by AT&T featuring the network operations center for their then Long Lines unit; this was high tech for the 1970s.
AT&T had designed a national network to process out of state or region calls and direct them automatically. But if disaster or overloaded situations occurred, this specific operations center would be able to redirect calls to another route. Communication between the central office and the Bedminster was crucial in case of possible outages or high call volumes, say around the holidays or disasters like earthquakes, etc.
Around this time #3 ESS switches were used around the Bell System. Not too long after #4 would replace the switching, and despite the 5ESS taking over central offices in some markets in the 80s, the 4ESS switching was commonly used for long distance, even up to the early 1990s.
Today Bedminster serves as a catchall as AT&T has evolved into different businesses since the Divesture and the death of long distance services.
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Sadly, not all operations are designed like the ol Bell System only because the technology is so complicated and Internet networking was never thought of running like telephones, because telephony routing was so fixated (or static to used todays terms.)
While the Internet was designed and can do things like hop onto another network on it’s own – if the first or second hit didn’t work then you’d get to your services. With IP based networking; you can’t just issue commands onto a router and redirect the data traffic as easily. Often when a network goes down, the easiest way is to reboot it or do whatever you can do to fend off the attacks. Another problem is just the plain insecurity of the Internet. I’m not the biggest expert in IP networking but another problem is the war between traditional networks that are hard-coded (ala Cisco IOS) and newer networks that are more “dynamic” like what occurred yesterday. Not only that but the consumer equivalent to oIP, the Internet of Things is not helping matters. That’s a whole different discussion outside the realm of this site.
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Phone of the Day: LEGOLAND Discovery Center | Boston, Massachusetts
Located just north of the Boston city line, in Somerville, Massachusetts, the LEGOLAND Discovery Center is located in the Assembly Row neighborhood. Unlike the LEGOLAND in California, or Florida, this place is an indoors given the climate of Boston, hazy hot summers, and very cold winters (honestly more of the former than the latter in recent years.)
Anyways these sets of pictures is a workspace of lady named Megan, whom builds little things shown in the Miniland section of the attraction. According to their Facebook page, she is a certified through Lego’s Master Builder Academy. Things such as characters from The Lego Movie, Wally (and his galpal) from the Boston Red Sox, the four colored puzzle Autism Awareness, etc. I actually met this lady at the Red Sox game that was Lego themed on the 31st. See telephony related post. In fact I found out that this was her work space after I snapped the picture of the notorious Cisco 6921. She came up to me about a few minutes later asking if we met at Fenway. I felt somewhat flattered that someone could recognize me among thousands that come there.
As you can tell, sadly Lego is on the “dark side” of telephony…:(
I was only able to come because the indoor park is only open to adults if you have kids. On the third Wednesdays of every month, they open it to adults for only a couple of hours, despite them selling adult beverages and closing time is bedtime for a 10 year old. (Nine o’ clock.)
I had fun regardless and hope I run into these fine folks again next month. The neighborhood is a wonderful attraction with it being setup as an outdoor mall. Click below the phone to see more Lego related pictures of the workspace.
NEC Rotary Telephone – NH Telephone Museum – September 2016
On my way home from my vacation (after clocking nearly 1,400 mile round trip in Northern New England), I stopped by the New Hampshire Telephone Museum. This was found in their foreign section. I do not know the details of this NEC set, just wanted to post it for equal opportunity purposes.
September 11th Tribute – “The Twins”
On this 15th anniversary of the most horrific and atrocious day in American history, your humble Curator would like to dedicate this day with the AT&T’s mini documentary of the construction of the World Trade Center around 1976 and the installation of switching systems. This video has been embedded in past posts around 9/11, but as a duty to remember, I am posting this again.
I hope you enjoy your day, remembering the day with some grief with happiness of being alive and (if you’re old enough) reminiscing of enjoying life before our world became vigilant of terror.
Here is the video: