Modern Telecommunications Overview

Part 1: Telecommunications overview, major telecom systems, protocols and standards

• What is telecom?
  • Overview diagram and explanation
    • Basic components of any telecom system
    • How they relate to end-user needs
  • Goals of telecom and how pieces fit together at highest level
• How telecom technologies work: the basics (partial list)
  • Wired and wireless systems
  • The electromagnetic spectrum
  • Analog vs digital
  • Conversion of analog to digital
  • Connection-oriented vs connectionless
  • Dedicated vs. switched
  • Synchronous vs asynchronous
  • Protocols
  • Packets
  • Bandwidth
  • Carriers and modulation
  • MPEG, JPEG, etc.
  • BRI, PRI
• Major telecom systems (partial list)
  • Wired systems: Copper/twisted pair, coax, optical fiber
  • RF/SATCOM: Land Mobile Radio (LMR), satellite
  • Cellular: Evolution of 2G to 3G, 4G LTE, and 5G
  • Other wireless: WiFi, CDMA2000, WiMAX
  • Optical: SONET/SDH, DWDM
  • Ethernet
  • IP
  • MPLS/VPN
  • ISDN
  • Free space optics
  • Radio/TV
• Protocols and standards
  • Purpose of and need for protocols and standards
  • OSI stack and how it relates to various systems and technologies
    • Understanding telecom in terms of layers
    • How layers relate to technologies
    • OSI stack and end-end telecommunications
  • Standards bodies and some typical standards
• Internet Protocol (IP) and Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)
  • What they are
  • How they work
  • How modern networks utilize them
  • How they are implemented across technologies and systems
  • Quality of Service (QoS) and IP networks
  • IP and common applications
• The Internet and how it works
  • Overview
  • Addressing
  • Infrastructure
  • End users and access
  • Regulation and future of the Internet
• IP Multimedia System (IMS)
  • What it is, goals
  • How it is envisioned to work
  • Relationship with other technologies
  • Fixed/mobile convergence

Part 2: In-depth discussion of select technologies, putting together whole systems, the Cloud, major evolving trends, how to buy telecom

• Telephony and VoIP
  • How it works
  • Supporting protocols
  • H.323 and SIP
  • IP PBX and other equipment
• Endpoint (access) technologies
  • Equipment (hardware/software)
  • Service delivery points (SDPs)
  • Purchase and pricing
• Transport (link) technologies
  • Equipment
  • Modulation techniques
  • SONET/MPLS/VPNs
  • Performance/capabilities
  • Limitations to performance (speed, error rates, Shannon’s law, etc.)
  • Impairments and their effect (noise, jitter, etc.)
  • Purchase and pricing
• Putting it all together
  • Building an end-end system
    • Components
    • How they work together
    • End-end performance specs
  • Examples of end-end systems
• The Cloud and modern usage of telecom
  • What the Cloud is
  • Brief history
  • What it can do and what it is expected to do in future
  • How Cloud relates to telecom
• Evolving technologies and trends
  • Future trends in telecom equipment, services, usage, prices, and regulation
  • Software Defined Networks (SDN)
  • Virtualization: Communications side, equipment side
  • Network Functions Virtualization (NFV)
  • Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications
• How to buy telecom equipment and services
  • Turnkey services vs. do-it-yourself
  • Pricing
  • Design and implementation considerations
• Course wrap-up