Our "new" Philips voice switch simulator.
Our "new" Voice & Data switch simulator (it is an modified older switchdesk unit) for our European E1 lines can help, to evaluate special requirements without going bankrupt on telco costs.
In 2003 we have been very close to buy a huge Nortel or Lucent voice switch within a 19" rack. It was a 480 kilo monster and would require tremendous freight costs to Germany. And we would have to fight against a huge collection of firmware and application software, never needed for our needs. So we have choosen to use our partners isdn laboratory and his perfect knowledge about all the little tricks to configure this switch as a telco E1 switch simulator. Many thanks to Frank Goesling from German Bergisch Gladbach. Please notice, we cannot simulate T1. We have no T1 in Europe.
The MAX 2000 configuration
In the middle of the picture, you see the open box with a lot of plugin cards and the switch-desk keyboard with large display. With the notebook on the right we monitor the MAX 2000 screen (the MAX is located behind the Notebook) and with the left screen we configure the internals of the voice switch simulator.
This "little" switch simulator (red arrow) has 2 x E1 (s2m primary multiplexer lines) and 8 x (64Kbit Euro-) ISDN lines, this means 16 data channels and 16 pots available.
The switch-desk keyboard control-unit has a large LCD display to monitor all 86 lines. Now we can simulate E1 dial out and E1 dial in line by line (30 lines at all).
Our first real project was to send 30 faxes at once to 30 different destinations all over Germany. The next project will be to receive 30 faxes at a time as a huge faxmachine.
Here you see the dimensions of the unit compared by a 17" monitor. In the rightmost lower corner you see the MAX 2000, with what we did check the functions.
So it is very important to know:
The Ascend MAXen have never been switches or switch simulators. The MAXen including the TNT have been routers for any kind of digital or modem dial in purposes and for nailed connections. Even VOIP was hooked on the MAXen with special DSP cards later.
Dont believe any rumours or specifications on ebay. These people have no knowledge at all, if they try to sell a MAX as an ISDN switch or so. They talk just junk.
On the right, its our laboratory in Wiesbaden with all the routers and switches for testing and logging.
On the right, in the middle the simulator box and left and right are two MAX 2000 with notebooks on top, now with two 16 x S56 modem boards for ISDN and modem/fax dial in and dial out.
This is our fully working test environment.
Again, you need this (or any) type of T1 or E1 digital voice switch to simulate any dial function.