NAME: ADAM CAVAZOS
TITLE: NETWORK ENGINEER
COMPANY: DOBSON TELEPHONE
PROJECT: REPLACE AGING MULTIPLEXERS

Vital information: Company consists of two ILECs: one in west Oklahoma, one east of Oklahoma City with 15,000 total access lines. Nine remote sites in Dobson Telephone and 28 remote sites in McLoud Telephone, which also is owned by the Dobson family.

We bring [both ILEC networks] through OC-192s and OC-48s to a host switch, the DMS-100 here in Oklahoma City. The best way to do that is to aggregate all that traffic into a DS-3, bring it back into the host site and drop it via T-1s wherever it goes. That's where the Exchange Mux 2 [from Charles Industries] comes into play.

Every so often I like to re-evaluate the equipment. Some of it's been out there for 10 or 15 years. We used Nortel OC-12s and FMT-150s to mux out. We had to use an old Nortel monitoring system called CAMMS that was strictly dial-up. The unit's so old, Nortel no longer maintains it. We never really had remote access anymore; we had to go on-site. Some of the 150s you couldn't directly connect to.

About a year ago, I started deploying Exchange Mux 2s. Now I have 77 DS-3 mux modules deployed — 11 shelves. I like the architecture. We're still doing the same 3-1 muxing. What happened was, I went to a new transport gear: the Traverse 2000 from Turin Networks. I chose the Exchange mux because it interoperates with Turin. When I upgrade my transport software, I'll be able to monitor all the muxes through my [graphical user interface]. The Web browser on the Exchange mux has been handy. I have full-menu point-and-click availability. [Our other management system] is command-only. I have to enter a command; I can't just point my mouse. Right now I'm traffic-monitoring SS7 links for the main switch. The Charles mux allows me to bridge the transmit — either direction — and dump that off into an external box to monitor traffic.

The Exchange mux is going to replace a lot of Nortel FMT-150s. It's not a comparison. [The 150s] are not GUI-driven. You're going from a dinosaur to a Cadillac in terms of monitoring.