Project-Based Learning of Telecommunication Networking

Abstract

This paper presents a student project in the telecommunications course that has been developed to provide a solution that is an improvement over a baseline design. The baseline design is the Optical Network Research Laboratory, a telecommunications network used by the College of Technology and the AT&T Technology Laboratory for training and research. The project uses technology standards in place today and planning for future technology being discussed, researched and commercialized. The project is divided in two phases: the equipment familiarization phase or the research phase and the design phase. The first phase mainly involves extensive research as well as visitations in order to understand and learn the operations of the existing baseline network infrastructure of the college and to become familiar with all the required telecommunication hardware and software. The second phase is the project proposal or design phase of a telecommunication system using any combination of T1, T3 or SONET networks that connects five cities with a combined distance of 2766 miles and 800 total users using a ring format OC-3 carrier system that interconnects the branches of a fictitious company. Every city is to have a PBX system and telephones based on PSTN to support the users and calling features. Although the design is based on a fictitious company, the concepts of researching, developing and designing a solution provides the building blocks that are used in the real-world environment. Therefore, the research of the system design recommends different equipment to provide a better solution with performance upgrades at a lower cost for future growth.