Air University

Electrical Engineering Department

Digital Data Networks (BETE- VIII)

Experiment # 3 The Local Loop

Objectives: 1- To study the local feeder network and its rout boundary. 2- To study the telephone cable color codes and determining the pair number from wire colors. Equipments required: 1- A feeder network cable. Introduction: For individual telephones to be useful, they must be interconnected to other telephones to establish a communication link. This is achieved by centralized form of switching that can establish a temporary connection between two parties wishing to communicate with each other. Each telephone subscriber is connected to a central office through a twisted pair of wires used as a transmission medium that is known as subscriber loop or local loop as shown in figure (1). Feeder Network: The feeder network consists of thousands of twisted pair wire that are brought out to the community in bundled cables and are fanned out to a number of servicing areas.

Figure (1) Central office.

Figure (2) Feeder network; a) local distributing area b) detail of a serving area. The number of subscriber loop pairs is planned ahead of time to exceed the number of subscribers in a service area; figure (2) illustrates how telephone lines are distributed.

Feeder network cables are manufacture in bundled increments of 25 pairs of twisted pair copper wires. Figure (3) illustrates a standard feeder network cable.

Figure (3) A feeder network cable. The feeder network cable is connected at the central offices main distribution frame (MDF) or demarcation point, the point at which all outside plant cable pairs are terminated and fused for over-voltage and current protection. On the side, a demarcation box, called a network interface device (NID) is typically mounted on the outside of the home that includes over-voltage and current protection. Telephone Cable Color Codes: Ten colors are used to identify tip and ring wire pairs in all telephone cables, large and small as shown in table (1). Tip White (W) = 0 Red (R) = 5 Black (Bk) = 10 Yellow (Y) = 15 Violet (V) = 20 Ring Blue (Bl) = 1 Orange (O) = 2 Green (G) = 3 Brown (Br) = 4 Slate (S) = 5

Table (1) Telephone cable standard color. Five colors are used to designate the tips and the other five for the rings, to form a permutation of 25 (5 X 5) color-pair combinations that form the basic binder unit or binder group, table (2) illustrates the 25 pair color coding.

Pair No. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

Pair Color White-Blue White-Orange White-Green White-Brown White-Slate Red-Blue Red-Orange Red-Green Red-Brown Red-Slate Black- Blue Black- Orange Black- Green Black-Brown Black-Slate Yellow Blue Yellow-Orange Yellow-Green Yellow-Brown Yellow-Slate Violet-Blue Violet-Orange Violet-Green Violet-Brown Violet-Slate

Abbreviation W-Bl W-O W-G W-Br W-S R-Bl R-O R-G R-Br R-S Bk-Bl Bk-O Bk-G Bk-Br Bk-S Y-Bl Y-O Y-G Y-Br Y-S V-Bl V-O V-G V-Br V-S

Table (2) Color coding for the standard 25 pair binder unit.

Determining the Pair Number: Cable technicians often determine the pair number based on the wire pair colors. Using table (1), a matrix shown in table (3) is defined. The numeric value of the wire pair is determined by adding the tip color to the ring color. RING Blue Orange Green Brown Slate White (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) W-Bl W-O W-G W-Br W-S Red (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) R-Bl R-O R-G R-Br R-S TIP

Black Yellow Violet

(11) Bk-Bl (16) Y-Bl (21) V-Bl

(12) Bk-O (17) Y-O (22) V-O

(13) Bk-G (18) Y-G (23) V-G

(14) Bk-Br (19) Y-Br (24) V-Br

(15) Bk-S (20) Y-S (25) V-S

Table (3) Color coding matrix for the standard 25 pair binder unit.