Telecommunication Systems At My Workplace

X (company name), the company I work for, has thousands of employees located in all fifty states, as well as other countries. There are many agent offices, claim offices, home office and three datacenters. Telecommunication systems tie all of these things together, making data sharing and communication possible. In this paper, I will provide observations of X's telecommunication systems. I will cover our company's phone network, datacenters connection to offices and remote access solution.

X's home office consists of multiple buildings scattered throughout CITY land area. However, our telephone network is set up in a way which allows home office employees dial 5-digit extension numbers to connect within home office without having to access outside line. Additionally, each employee has a dedicated outside line that can be accessed by dialing '9' as a prefix. Long distance service is available on all lines; however, international service is by default unavailable. International access can be granted for an employee's telephone line once necessary approvals are received.

X telephone system allows to conference multiple participants into one call. However, if more than 5 people need to be included into a conversation, a special conference number is used to conduct the meeting. An X conference number is used by all company employees for telephone conferencing. The number can also be used by employees outside of United States. X managers are assigned a virtual room number that needs to be dialed by conference participants. In order for the telephone meeting to begin, the owner of the conference room has to dial a password. Once the password is entered, a conference can begin and all callers join the conversation.

The data center is a collection of different computer systems communicating through various protocols. The Local Area Network (LAN) is split into two token ring networks to help reduce network traffic and minimize collisions. Both token rings are connected via hub/router. One token ring connects all related servers, such as domain servers, system management server and geographical server. Another token ring network is used primarily for connectivity to the data residing on the legacy systems, such as mainframe and AS/400.

Connectivity between the data center and the agent offices is provided through a Frame Relay-Permanent Virtual Connection going through the Multiple Protocol Network (MPN). Local equipment such as workstations and printers are connected through an Ethernet LAN.

Employees are offered an opportunity to work from home, accessing the network remotely. Enterprise remote Desktop is an application portal that permits access to X Enterprise Applications from an employee owned PC. The Enterprise remote Desktop uses Citrix's NFuse technology, which creates a portal of applications that