atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Wiring - Telecom Carriers - Trunks & Services Telecom Service & Providers Circuit IDs

I can see how this is going to cause some confusion… I deal with this stuff all day everyday and it still seems normal to me but I can understand looking from the outside it would seems a little odd.

First off there two different entities that NAME circuits.
1) Inter exchange Carrier (IXC’s) Long Distance Carriers such as AT&T, Sprint, Verizon Business (old MCI/WorldCom.)
2) There are Local Exchange Carrier (LEC’s) Those are the Telcos such as at&t (note lower-case,) Qwest, Verizon, AllTel (aka Windstream) CenturyTel, etc…

IXC’s use Circuit Reference numbers (CKR’s) to name their circuits end-to-end.

LEC’s use “circuit id’s” (ECCKT’s) to NAME their circuits.

What Tim has posted is for AT&T (the IXC) naming for “Circuit References” (CKR) for digital data services.

One end-to-end circuit that crosses LATA’s will actually have three NAMES. Two “circuit id’s” (ECCKT’s or aka ckt id) and one “circuit reference.”

Let’s see if I can type out something that formats well enough that it gives a picture of it.

Tim ---------------------------- ---- AT&T Long distance ------------- Bryan
Upland, CA ----------------------- (Frame Relay Cloud) -------------- O’Fallon, MO
End-user --------------------------- x-connect ------------------------- end-user
at&t Telco ------------------------- ASI --------------------------------- CenturyTel
11/HCGS/000111//PT ------------------------------------------------ 27/HCGS/000333/CT
< ----------------------------- /DHEC/000222/ATI -------------------------->


At either end you'll often see BOTH names on the tag. The LEC's local "ckt id" and the end-to-end CKR.