Nortel Meridian
Encyclopedia
| Nortel Meridian 1 PBX | |
| A Meridian 1 at Parkway North High School Parkway North High School Parkway North High School is a coeducational public secondary school in Unincorporated St. Louis County, Missouri, United States. The school is one of five high schools in the Parkway School District and enrolls 1,445 students in grades 9-12. Its mascot is the Viking... |
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Nortel
Nortel
Nortel Networks Corporation, formerly known as Northern Telecom Limited and sometimes known simply as Nortel, was a multinational telecommunications equipment manufacturer headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada...
Meridian is a private branch exchange. It provides advanced voice features, data connectivity, LAN
Län
Län and lääni refer to the administrative divisions used in Sweden and previously in Finland. The provinces of Finland were abolished on January 1, 2010....
communications, computer telephony integration
Computer telephony integration
Computer telephony integration, also called computer–telephone integration or CTI, is a common name for any technology that allows interactions on a telephone and a computer to be integrated or coordinated...
(CTI), and information services for communication applications ranging from 60 to 80,000 lines.
History
Exploratory development on digital technology, common for the SL-1 (PBX) and the DMS (public switch) product lines, began in 1969 at Northern Telecom, while R&D activities related to the SL-1 started in June 1973. SL stands for Stored Logic.It was introduced by Northern Telecom in December 1975, with an original capacity from 100 to 7,600 lines, and became the first fully digital PBX announced on the global market aimed at the smaller PBX market. In the early 1970s, most PBXs were either electromechanical (e.g. cross-bar) or based on an hybrid technology (e.g. switching matrix made from a two-dimensional array of contacts but control performed by an electronic logic). For this reason, the SL-1 enjoyed a great success on the enterprise market both in North-America and globally.
Its success went on to power the company into a leadership position in the telephony world, and led to expanded designs "up and down" to provide products at all sizes, including the DMS
Digital Multiplex System
Digital Multiplex System is the name shared among several different telephony product lines from Nortel Networks for wireline and wireless operators...
series high-end machines, and the Meridian Norstar
Meridian Norstar
The Meridian Norstar, later called Nortel Norstar was a small-office digital PBX introduced by Northern Telecom . It is based on the same internal design and instruction set as Nortel's earlier SL-1 and DMS systems, allowing it to support features such as integrated voice messaging, automatic call...
for smaller installations up to 200 users. The SL-1 was gradually enhanced (peripheral hardware, packaging, etc.) and renamed Meridian-1 in the late 1980s. The Meridian-1 has evolved to support IP telephony and other next generation IP services.
Impact
The Meridian has 43 Million installed users worldwide, making it the most widely used PBX.The Meridian is one of the few PBX's still available from a major communications supplier that can be configured as non-VOIP PBX.
Models
The Meridian 1 range currently consists of several models:- Meridian 1 Option 11C (60-800 lines)
- Meridian 1 Option 11C Mini (60-128 lines)
- Meridian 1 Option 61C (600-2000 lines)
- Meridian 1 Option 81C (200-16,000 lines)
Additionally, other products have been sold using the Meridian brand:
- The Norstar key telephone systemKey telephone systemA business telephone system is any of a range of a multiline telephone systems typically used in business environments, encompassing systems ranging from small key systems to large scale private branch....
was sold as the Meridian NorstarMeridian NorstarThe Meridian Norstar, later called Nortel Norstar was a small-office digital PBX introduced by Northern Telecom . It is based on the same internal design and instruction set as Nortel's earlier SL-1 and DMS systems, allowing it to support features such as integrated voice messaging, automatic call...
in some markets, until the mid 1990s - A large-scale switch based on the DMS-100DMS-100The DMS-100 Switch is a line of Digital Multiplex System telephone exchange switches manufactured by Nortel Networks.The purpose of the DMS-100 Switch is to provide local service and connections to the PSTN public telephone network. It is designed to deliver services over subscribers' telephone...
is sold as the Meridian SL-100
Resellers, and accessory manufacturers frequently but erroneously use the phrase "Meridian Option" to refer to the Meridian 1 range, to distinguish it from the smaller and larger Norstar and SL-100
Digital Line Card
A digital line card is an intelligent peripheral equipment (IPE) device which can be installed in the IPE module. It provides 16 voice and 16 data communication links between a Meridian 1 switch and modular digital telephones.The digital line card
Line card
A line card or Digital Line Card is a modular electronic circuit on a printed circuit board, the electronic circuits on the card interfacing the telecommunication lines coming from the subscribers to the rest of the telecommunications access network.A line card commonly interfaces the twisted pair...
supports voice only or simultaneous voice and data service over a single twisted pair of standard telephone wiring. When a Meridian digital telephone is equipped with the data option, an asynchronous ASCII terminal, or a PC acting as an asynchronous ASCII terminal, can be connected to the system through the digital telephone.
Physical description
Digital line cards are housed in the Intelligent Peripheral Equipment (IPE) Modules. Up to 16 cards are supported.The digital line card circuitry is mounted on a 31.75 cm by 25.40 cm (12.5in. by 10 in.) double-sided printed circuit board. The card connects to the backplane through a 160-pin edge connector
Edge connector
An edge connector is the portion of a printed circuit board consisting of traces leading to the edge of the board that are intended to plug into a matching socket. The edge connector is a money-saving device because it only requires a single discrete female connector , and they also tend to be...
. The faceplate of the digital line card is equipped with a red LED
LEd
LEd is a TeX/LaTeX editing software working under Microsoft Windows. It is a freeware product....
that lights when the card is disabled.
When the card is installed, the LED remains lit for two to five seconds as a self-test runs. If the self-test completes successfully, the LED flashes three times and remains lit until the card is configured and enabled in software, then the LED goes out. If the LED continually flashes or remains weakly lit, replace the card.
Functional description
The digital line card is equipped with 16 identical digital line interfaces. Each interface provides a multiplexed voice, data, and signaling path to and from a digital terminal (telephone) over a 2-wire full duplex 512 kHz Time Compression Multiplexed (TCM) digital link. Each digital telephone and associated data terminal is assigned a separate Terminal Number (TN) in the system database, giving a total of 32 addressable units per card.Evolution Path
The Nortel Meridian 1 can be upgraded to support VoIP in two forms:- VoIP Trunking, the Meridian 1 can have ITG-Trunk cards added to it to support PBX-to-PBX voice trunking using H.323
- VoIP Line (VoIP Sets), the Meridian 1 can have IP Line cards added to it to support VoIP sets.
The introduction of Release 3.0 for the Meridian 1, otherwise known as the CS1000 Release 3.0 also provides an upgrade path for the existing customer base to upgrade a Meridian 1 to an IP-PBX