Company Profile

This engagement was an opportunity to assist an independent telephone company in upgrading its infrastructure. The company was installing Juniper MX edge routers and Juniper EX switches in support of its digital subscriber line (DSL) and voice customers. The task at hand was the deployment of two virtual private network technologies: virtual private LAN service (VPLS), and a Layer 3 virtual private network (L3VPN) overlaid on a border gateway protocol/multiprotocol label switching (BGP/MPLS) network.

The work environment of this service provider reminded me of my introduction to telephony many years ago, when I worked summers at the Champlain Telephone Company. Working part-time while I was in college, I assisted line gangs, installers, and central office (CO) repairmen. This essentially meant trying to keep out of their way and learning as much as I could. How things have changed: from open-wire 16-party lines to Gigabit per second (Gbps) Ethernet in 30 short years.