sundance-communications.com/forum Forums Wiring - Telecom Carriers - Trunks & Services T1's, CSU's and DSU's T-1 Migrations

Hello, first wanted to say...WOW...what an awesome forum...The knowledge here and helpfulness of the gurus is amazing!!!

Here's what I have going on. We currently have over a 100 sites with each having 1 T-1 for data, and another T for voice. We have various providers, AT&T, Sprint, etc. What we are likely going to do is migrate everything to Qwest, have only 1 T, and everything coming into one of their IAD's. Currently we have Smartjack-->Cat5-->Router. My understanding, the IAD channelizes the T, and will allocate a channel for voice whenever someone makes a call, and the rest is allocated for data.

I guess one big concern I have is cutting back the bandwidth. Assuming that keeping 2 T's is not an option, any suggestions of similar circuits that could give us more bandwidth and come close in price to a single T?

I used to do a lot of T-1 installs on the customer side, but it's been a while. Any suggestions, ideas, hints, warnings, etc. about what to expect w/changing over from current setup to new setup??? I'm guessing that they just take out the old provider's smartjack, put in their IAD, terminate the T ckt to the IAD, then I connect our rtr to the IAD same as I would have a smartjack? Is it really going to be that simple?

Thanks!

In theory yes, it is as simple as that. Not to say that the practice may be different, but a lot depends on your setup and the provider.
Not every IAD/provider can handle dynamic voice/data allocation though. If you've been told that this can be done, then you're good to go.
Assuming you want to stay within the SLA parameters of T1, the only other option I had experience with that ALSO saved money, was getting T1 over IP (Also known as TDMOIP). There are a number of ways to do it, the most cost-effective right now seems to be utilising something called "Carrier Ethernet Over Copper" with CPE by Actelis which replace the SmartJack.
This is fairly new, and may not be implemented where you are.

Hi there 11bangx2,
I’ve never seen a TDM IAD that did dynamic allocation of time slots for use on data when voice lines are not in use. All of them I’ve worked with are fixed bandwidth per channel. Just because I have not seen it, doesn’t mean dynamic allocation ain’t available in an IAD but I’m very doubtful your assumption is correct.

Is it going to be that simple as “plug –n- play” (or pray) like you’re asking? Ummm, nope. Doubt that too. Depending on the equipment you’re migrating over I’m thinking it’s not going to be too difficult but not a simple as that.

Here’s a few things that are bouncing ‘round in my head that you’ll need to look at:
* Whether it be a new one, or using the existing one that’s there already, your new IAD will plug into the T1 NID (smartjack.)
* Using an IAD to split data and voice will mean there will be two outputs from it. Fractional T1 Data goes to your router and voice outputs to your PBX/”key system” or phone sets. (You have not given us anything to go on as to how your current voice equipment is set-up.)
* Your data is going to go from full T1 one pipe to a Fractional T1 pipe. I’m assuming at least some minimal reconfiguration would be required there and possible a hardware change if your port is a fixed T1 port.

Good luck and keep the questions coming as needed… There’s a bunch of sharp folks watching the forum.

Bryan, I was refering to the Cisco 2430 Series IADs. They are hybrid TDM/IP devices as you may know. Obviously, they don't tweak channels to do dynamic, they use some sort of "pseudowire" scheme to allocate T1-equivalent bandwidth (with T1 quality) as needed. It does work, at least utilizing the CPE I mentioned in my earlier post, though Cisco says it should work with others as well.

Some more info on the proposed voice/data setup would be nice.

If its an Adtran TA600 series router, they do not support dynamic channel allocation HOWEVER they are really nice to work with.

Most likely the providers device will have an ethernet port for data. At least that is what we usually see.

Our current setup are 2 separate T's. One for data comes into SmartJack-->WIC on Cisco router.
Other one for voice goes into Mittel PBX system.

I'm not sure who the manu. is going to be. Whomever Qwest uses for their IAD's???

So I guess maybe one of my questions was answered there...The IAD will be replacing our current cisco router's...???

Well the IAD in some cases also has a FT1 or V35 passthrough so when customers want to keep their Cisco as the network edge, we pass the data channels out to the FT1 or V35 and plug the cisco into that.

This also depends on whether or not you are peeling voice channels off of the data T1.

Also depends on the functionality needed out of a router if it will replace your Cisco rtr or no… MOST IAD’s have very low-end router functionality.

There’s many number of hardware configuration that still can be possible with the IAD. As mentioned you can hand the data off from the IAD to existing router.

i know the way that timewarner telecom is doing is using a system called purepacket node from telco systems. what happends is you do gr303 for your tdm service to the system and you assign crv's to the iads or ofcourse you can do mgcp not sure if it will do sip. anyways the system is all dynamic and will only cut down the data when there is a voice call. we are in the process of buying one of these systems info is below.

https://www.telco.com/int/index/en/prodbycat/prod/77