I found these whilst looking for some other pics. They are from a Telephone Exchange in Australia (I thought it was a Openreach one but its too tidy and well lit :laugh_at:) but we use similar equipment in the UK.
MDF (main distribution frame). the other end of your telephone wire ends up here. Those are terminal blocks on the RHS of the ladder.
Last time I was inside a Telephone Exchange (high school visit) broadband wasn’t invented and phones still had dials on them :crazy:
In England those ladders have “LOOK before moving ladder” on them (with the O being two cartoon eyes). This was because there weren’t always enough ladders, and if you didn’t look there might be someone still at the top! Some had trays on them what tools and other items were placed in (and occasionally forgotten about). a set of 81’s (long nosed pliers) or a spool of jumper cable are not what you want landing on you from a height (its a half km of cable and quite heavy!) The Aussies have made sure there are plenty of ladders and removed the tray to stop that hazard. (you can see a empty cable spool down on the floor).
equipment to test a broadband connection. There is a 340 test telephone for the normal voice service. I have one of these for work. you can check if a broadband line is active by setting it to monitor and you hear a loud “hiss” from the carrier – but its not advisable if it is a live circuit with users on the other end of it (like in the office) as it tends to cause the router to drop connection :laugh_at:
DSLAM’s for various ISPs. The other end of the cable from your premises connects to them. The dark grey cabinet on the right with thick blue and red cables is for power from the Exchange Battery. It is – 48V DC (the positive of the battery is connected to earth and the metal frame of everything – this stops metal corroding in damp conditions (as the telephone lines also have this -48V DC on them).
a new DSLAM for ADSL2+. it is Chinese.
Siemens B-RAS (Broadband Remote Access Server). the DSLAM connects to this via fibre and this connects to larger routers for the Internet. If you have a flaky line in the UK the “B-RAS profile” can drop and your broadband can get slower!
CISCO core router. as its name suggests, it routes all the main internet traffic for a town or city . there is tape on the ground for a exclusion zone as nothing else can go there to prevent it overheating or access being blocked. There should be more than one for each large city, and there is a big a warning sign on it that any work done on it must be notified to the business continuity group of the telephone company. Otherwise whoever monkeys about with will break the Internet for tens of thousands of users:yakk:
Exchange battery. 2 x 48V batteries. these can power the whole exchange for 10-12 hours when everything else is in darkness.
They are much newer than the British Telecom ones I’ve seen. Those were the old style vats of sulphuric acid with lead plates in them, a great smell of vitriol in the air and a warning not to smoke in the battery room (as the whole exchange could go kaboom) – a hangover from the old Post Office days when you could smoke anywhere else.. Openreach do sell the backup power to ISPs but I’ve no idea if they actually use if or if they just use normal leccy.
pics from this Australian dude..
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22617113@N05/sets/72157625780074560/
if I ever manage to blag a visit into our local exchanges and am allowed to take photos I’ll put a British one on here but I don’t think they’ve changed much from 1987 and BT might be slightly bashful about that..
