Huffman Trucking Telephony

I Current State Telephony Systems Analysis

A Physical Location Background

Huffman Trucking has offices paired with plants in four states: California, Missouri, New Jersey, and Ohio. Huffman has grown both organically and through acquisition. The tremendous growth experienced by the company has also shined the light on some growing pains. Each of the four locations have independently managed networks including telephony which has resulted in disconnected systems that require independent investment for upgrades, support, and maintenance and lacks the ability to leverage investments across the organization. The end result includes multiple proprietary telephony platforms and gateways that leave the organization unable to reduce overhead cost in this area. There is some good news found in some levels of common platforms among several locations. The focus of this paper will be to identify the common strengths regarding the types of systems, define the physical extent of the systems, and describe the services available. In addition opportunities to leverage existing investments and reduce cost will be identified.

B Network Commonality and Variance

According to the network diagrams provided for each facility by Huffman there are some consistencies among the various facilities. The Missouri and Ohio office locations currently have an Avaya Digital Phone System installed that communicates through the use of a token-ring. Similarly the Missouri and Ohio plant locations have commonality by employing a token-ring to enable communication of several analog handset terminals to a mainframe. In the plant all of the phones also communicate through the token-ring without the benefit of any type of digital phone system. Other consistencies, albeit to a lesser extent, can be found among the California and New Jersey Facilities. The New Jersey office location employs the use of a proprietary TDM PBX with a tie trunk to a similar PBX in the plant to allow internal (3, 4, or 5 digit dialing between all phones at either the plant or the office). The California plant appears to have a possible upgrade from what was most likely a similar structure to the New Jersey Plant to a Nortex Digital Phone System with VoIP. This system allows the California Plant to leverage the existing network used to communicate data across the Ethernet (and ultimately across the Internet) to additionally manage voice communications. The VoIP could additionally (although not documented as such) utilize a Public Switch Telephone Network (PSTN) gateway to send digital signals (voice) allowing the company to make local calls outside of the LATA where the plants reside.

C Physical Extent of Systems

The Ohio and Missouri (offices and plants) networks utilize a ring topology as the foundation. Both Offices have an Avaya Digital Phone System to manage voice communication within the office (interoffice) and local/long distance calling through a PSTN connection. Data and video are managed separately through the ring and for outside the firewall communication through a T1 connection. The digital Avaya systems at both offices provides the ability to dial between offices as if you where intraLATA (ie. 3, 4, 5 digit interoffice calling). The plants for these respective locations tell a different story. While a token-ring is still the basis for the network the plants have approximately 5 terminals connected (at each plant). This indicates the phone systems in the Ohio and Missouri plants are most likely analog thus challenging convergence with the digital systems at the offices. The analog handsets would likely need to be replaced in order to upgrade to a VoIP or digital system. This increased cost should be considered during planning for improvements.

The California and New Jersey Offices have a proprietary TDM PBX connected to a PSTN with what appears to be a tie trunk to the respective plant locations allowing interoffice calling. Intra and Inter LATA calls are managed through the PSTN connection. Data and video appear to be managed separately through a bus topology with a 28.8 Modem connection to the internet. The handset units at these locations are likely analog. The New Jersey Plant diagram provides little information about the actual phone systems other than a patch panel is connected to the office PBX. The New Jersey plant is a very simple system that does allow interoffice calling solely to the New Jersey office and utilizes a PSTN for all other types of calls. The network diagram for the California Office is the first variance among the various locations with respect