Re:ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville
by function_seven on Saturday December 26, 2020 @01:25AM
(#25541839)
"Central Office" is the wrong term for it, but I've worked in a couple switching offices that were built to look just like another house in the tract. They were RSUs (Remote Switch Unit), that trunked everything back to a parent CO.
In both cases it was a housing tract that was allergic to ugly buildings or something. The vast majority of RSUs looked like smaller versions of the CO. Gray cinder blocks and asphalt.
Re:ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville
by giantrobot on Saturday December 26, 2020 @05:06AM
(#25542464)
That's interesting, I've only ever seen cross boxes (ugly green boxes) with RCUs in them. Then again I may have seen tons of disguised RSUs and never have known it.
This particular building is an old AT&T-cum-BellSouth-cum-AT&T tandem office. It's where end offices (that connected to actual customer phones) would be connected together and connected to inter exchange carriers.
AFAIK AT&T tended to build their tandem offices as reinforced style buildings. They are larger than end offices and needed high availability because they were the central node for a region's telephone network and its connection to other networks.
I don't think I've ever seen any central office in a regular home in a neighborhood. Even end offices, while smaller than tandems, required a lot of equipment and power backups. Besides the equipment in the building they'd usually have secured parking/storage for service vehicles.