atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information Advice needed on Extention Number plan large scale

I have the opportunity to design a very large scale numbering plan for a school district with 20 buildings...yep..2-0! 20. Any advice?

It depends on how many phones in each school? Are they going to be networked together? What type of system? DiD's? For something like that I would use 4 digit numbers and assign ranges to each school with enough headroom for add ons later.

Thanks John807, youre absolutly correct. Sorry for not being more detailed.

Phone per school: anywhere from 10 to 75
Networking: prefered so ext to ext calling can happen
System: preferred SV9100
DIDs: yes, blocks of 100
Digits: yes, 4 prefered

However, what do you do once you get past (for example) 40XX, 41XX, 42XX, 43XX, 44XX, 45XX, 46XX, 47XX, 48XX, 49XX...that takes care of 10 buildings, after this I have no choice but to go to another lead in digit...maybe I'm looking at things the wrong way.

I have a school district where we use 4000, 5000,6000 and 7000. 4000-4150 is one school 4151- 4250 is another and so on. The indiviual blocks Identify individual schools. For DR and redundancy each school has it's own phone system all networked all connected with fiber. They didn't want one large system in the high school and IP handsets to the other schools for security and bandwith concerns. They didn't want hosted for the same reason. Everything works exactly how they need it to be. We also created 1 instead of 9 as there outbound digit and a table so they can just dial 911 or 1911.

John 807 uses the same method we do.

REMEMBER: In an Emergency people have a problem dialing anything other than 911. Remember: EMERGENCY.

One method we use to simplify patch panels:

F1.R2.P3.46

Frame 1, Rack 2, Patch Panel 3, Port 46

Frame refers to which IT closet.
Rack refers sequence 001 through XXX.
Panel sequence from top to bottom
Port number obvious.

Using this method is much easier than trying to locate cable number D-1054.

Ya you are on the right path. Another lead digit won't kill you so going into another range isn't the worst thing. Frankly I would split it into 1XXX elementary, 2XXX middle school, 3XXX for high schools but whatever floats your boat. I assume you are netlinking or CCIS? Definitely be using ARS and F-Route tables. Should be fairly simple, you are looking the right way at it, NPL is everything. 911 isn't an issue for you with the SV9100, just get your ARS COS setup right (if netlinkled) otherwise with CCIS easy as pie.

The challenge is going to be matching the DIDs to the extension numbers. How do you keep your numbering plan intact without wasting DIDs on devices that don't need them?

I'm not sure I understand the question? If the carrier issues a range of say nnn-1000 - nnn-3000. And you want internal extension 4500 to be nnn-1000 you would just program it as such. Did's don't need to match internal extensions. In his case being a school he is probably porting existing numbers at least for the main numbers that are probably not going to be in any special sequence.

Dean I like that cable numbering plan. We still use IDF A cable number which requires numbering all the patch panels. In your method I guess you tag the rack and the individual panels. Do you comingle voice and data in the same rack or do you use seperate racks or seperate them in the same rack. I guess it depends on the job size?

You are correct with the labeling. We try to keep Voice and Data on separate racks, but of course if you only have 20 voice and 20 data no one would expect two different racks.

We NEVER mix Voice, Data, AP's, Video on the same patch panel.

And as usual TIE cables are always on the last ports of the last patch panel.

Professor Shadow - I had a job with 70+ cables. I had encountered a similar sized job where the philosophy was any cable could do anything.

I adopted that here and have had great success.

All cables were CAT6 and terminated to 568B on both ends. I just labelled from 1-72 since it was a small job.

The phone system, for now, utilizes digital phones but that is likely to change someday so, in my mind, this is future resistant. Data is on a switch and the PBX ports are terminated to a patch panel which is clearly labelled.

To differentiate function, I used different colored patch cables. Yellow for voice, black for data, and white for video. The IT guy added red for servers if I am not mistaken.

The IT guy is unusually sharp and he loves the layout. He moves things around with no problem and is careful to maintain the patch cable color scheme we have agreed on.

I like it because, to date, I have never had to deal with the cabling or come across the inevitable we want to move a phone to this office, can you come move it? The IT guy does it all himself.

I could see this being impractical on a larger job but, I am curious as to what other might think of this scheme for the small to medium sized jobs. ~ Mike

Michael in theory it's a great idea. However in the real world those color coordinated schemes slowly slide off the rails. I need a2 foot green patch for a camera well I only can find a 2 foot grey, It's o.k. I'll change it later and so it goes with no one ever changing it out. You have one one pair digital set for a courtesy phone now cubes are going there for more employees. However it will be temporary so I'll make a splitter on both ends to add more phones with out pulling more cable because the client doesn't want to spend to add more cable there's an AP so the new folks wilo do data wirelessly. Just that quickly a great idea turns south. Never mind you ran a cable for voice for future use you go to use it and find out it was rerouted to the ceiling for an IP camera because the cable was run during construction and now a new cable run was "Too Hard" for the other guy so now your quoted and expected 15 minute job becomes an all day affair. Plus new switches were mounted in your expansion foot print so you get to add a new rack. Sorry this was just an issue for us last week.

I agree, i have seen so many Messed up jobs i get frustrated ,, From Networking messes and Telecom ,, some are so bad i can't even get the patch panel off the rack to look at the back terminations ,,because they didn't leave any service loop or slack .Oh well i shouldn't complain. All best with the project.

I have 57 nodes at work, with another half-dozen to be added this year. Not all have DIDs, but for the ones that do, I match the last 4 digits of the DID with the extension number. With 700 DIDs at HQ alone, it requires close coordination with our carriers.

If you want the extension number to match the room number then you may, depending on the numbering scheme, need 4 digits just for the extension. For example, if your buildings are numbered using architectural numbers, i.e. A100, B100, etc then you'll need a digit for the section (a=1, b=2, etc). Also, you likely have multiple schools for the same level, 10 primary, 2 intermediate, etc would it make more sense for your customer to have all of the primaries be 1Xxxx? The intermediates 2Xxxx?

However, 2 things fly my flag up the pole regarding the DID to EXT to RM#. 1. There's no physical security with that. We are in an age that some physical security is needed and simply having a phone number that also tells someone exactly where to go in a building...no thanks.

And, #2, all building numbering would have to be the same across the 10 buildings...that would be a monster to reinvent the wheel!

Bull Tone -

Are you bringing DID Trunks into each building or bringing them into one central hub site and then distributing them via tie trunks to the other building.

I did A LOT of work building very large private networks when I worked for GTE.

Give me an idea of what you've got and what you're looking to do and maybe I can help.

What sort of equipment are you putting in?

Sam

Looking to put in NEC with PRIs if thebudget comes in where it needs to be!

What's in there now?

Nortel's & CENTREX Pots

We did almost the exact same thing a couple years ago. 13 locations all with their own SV9100. Analog trunking at the schools and PRI at the head office, no DIDs at the schools and IP-CCIS between locations.

Each building has its own facility code that the school district used, 11, 14, 17, 21 etc so for those we just made a four digit extension number with first two being the facility code and last two being the last two of the room number. Room 158 in building 17 becomes extension 1758.

Some buildings have facility codes between 01 and 09, for those we used 5 as a leading digit so room 147 in building 06 is extension 5647.

We didn't have DIDs to try to match up and they wanted the extensions to match as close as possible to the room number as we removed the intercom phones from the classrooms and replaced with the NEC 2 button digital sets.

The systems were installed over the summer of 2015 and the CCIS was setup last year. So far everyone from teachers to admin staff love it. It was a great project to be involved with.