EXPERTECH OUTLINE-
TELEPHONY FUNDAMENTALS 

Lesson 1: 
The telephone is invented

• Milestones
• Terminology (LATA, LEC, IXC, ITSP)

Lesson 2: 
The Telephone Network

• Understanding sound propagation
• The traditional ILEC PSTN network, connecting to IXC
• PBX, key systems, Centrex
• Traditional vs. IP Telephony

Lesson 3: 
Voice Transmission

• Terminology (frequency, passband, TDM, analog vs. digital; content vs. signaling)
• Digitizing voice (sampling, quantizing, companding, encoding per Shannon and Nyquist)

Lesson 4: 
Switching

• Types of switches
• Media gateway functionality

 

Lesson 5: 
Traffic Engineering

• Blocking vs. queuing
• Erlang calculations
• Trunk groups, law of large numbers
• Packet voice systems

Lesson 6: 
Signaling and SS7

• Purpose of signaling
• In-band vs. out-of-band
• The SS7 network

Lesson 7: 
Access Options

• POTS, ISDN, DSL, HFC, cellular systems

Lesson 8: Trunking Options

• T-Carrier (T-1/3), SONET