Answers: 17. The five classes of predivestiture North American Telephone Switching Hierarchy are : a.

Class 5 end office : it is a local exchange where loops received and terminated dial tones. Here subscriber loops are interconnected. Some class 5 offices were classified as class4/5 and it is called access tandem office which was located in rural areas. b. class 4 toll center: there were two types of class 4 offices namely 4C and 4P. 4C operates for both outward and inward calling services while 4P operates only inwards and probably no service. The traffic is concentrated in only one switching center. c. class 3 primary center: this class provided service to small groups of class 4 office within a small area of state. They provided same functions as of class 4. d. class 2 sectional center: these centers provide service to part of state or several states depending on the population density. Operator service was not provided. Also it provided the same switching function as class 3 and 4 does. e. class 1 regional center: these were the highest ranking office in terms of area served and trunking options present. There were 10 centers in US and 2 in Canada and has the same switching functions class 2,3,4. 18. 19. Progressive switching scheme provides end to end routing. It is slow and unreliable because messages are transported over same signal using analog signals. 20. SS7 is used to transfer signaling information through telephone network. SS7 standard tells us about the procedure protocol which are necessary to exchange information over PSTN using wireless or wire line telephone setup. It determines switching paths before it is enabled. It performs its function by exchanging messages between the components. The functions of SS7 network are a. basic call setup b. wireless services c. local number portability d. toll free services e. Efficient and secure communication. 21. Common channel signaling (CCS) is a facility which is used for transferring control and signaling information. 22. Local number portability requires companies to support porting of numbers, which allows customers to keep the same number with different service. 23. Plain old telephone network is a voice operated telephone network which is based on analog transmission.

24. North American switching hierarchy is divided into two areas i.e. signaling and switching. The signaling network is the SS7 which is used to determine how the voice and data signals are routed within the network. Switching network is the network that transports voice and data from one subscriber to another. 25. After AT&T was divided the calling areas were changed to Local access and Transport areas (LATA) which consists of a three level hierarchy. 26. Point of presence (POP) provides legal boundary to maintain equipment and transmission lines. It is a point separating two companies 27. The telephone companies which gives facilities and interconnection to the subscribers within the local access and transport areas are called Local exchange carriers. 28. Signaling points provides access to SS7 network, databases used by switches and transfer of messages from SS7 to other points in the network. 29. The three SS7 signaling points are: Service switching points: SSPs are local switches which are compatible with SS7 software. It converts information from voice switches to SS7 signal format. It als sends query messages on how to determine a call. Signal transfer points: STPs are routers in the SS7 network where it routes incoming message to its destination based on the routing information present in the message. Service control points: SCPs contains databases which stores information about the services and also the routing of numbers. It also converts SS7 protocol to X.25 or it provides communication with database directly using primitive interface. 30. To pass information within the network there are nodes which exchange signaling information, there is an addressing scheme, which is not connected physically. Each node is known as Point node.