Software professionals starting work in the telecommunications industry are often baffled by unfamiliar technology and jargon. This book will provide you with a broad understanding of telecoms: from the top-level business processes, through the network technologies, down to the special techniques used in telecoms software. Armed with this knowledge, you will be able to work and communicate effectively in all areas of the industry. This book covers: - The telecoms market: who the players are, their goals and challenges, and how software engineering companies operate in the market - Telecoms network architectures and transmission principles - Transmission systems, including wireline, optical fibre, multiplexing, mobile comms, WAP and UMTS - Circuit mode switching: signaling systems, telephony switches and intelligent networks - Internet architectures, IP and voice-over-IP - Telco business processes and operations - Telecoms network and business support systems - Telecoms software languages and techniques This book cuts through telecoms jargon and explains things simply and clearly. Provides a broad, comprehensive coverage of telecoms technology. Introduces the key software aspects of telecoms systems.
FREE Two-Day Shipping for students on millions of items. Learn more |
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From the Inside Flap
Preface
This book is intended to help software professionals to practice in the telecommunications industry. Telecoms is technologically dominated by software and is therefore an industry that is acutely hungry for the services of capable software people. However, if someone with only a general IT background goes into a telecoms company, what he hears is often baffling, as Figure 1 shows. This may strike the software generalist with awe, which would be a pity, because actually the particular ideas in the picture are quite simple. But there is a genuine obstacle to be overcome. Telecoms networks involve a truly mind-boggling array of inter-operating technologies. The field is so laden with jargon that unless the software person has an understanding of a wide range of technologies, he or she has little hope of communicating with the telecoms engineer. Consider the example of Figure 1. To make sense of that requires a grasp of switch-routing heuristics, internet mobility, cable TV networks, third-generation cellular networks, transmission systems, provisioning and traffic management. Happily, a grasp is all that is needed. To work effectively with telecoms engineers, you do not need to know their job anything like as thoroughly as they do. Some parts of telecoms technology are particularly software-intensive, and in those parts, the software professional may need something more than a superficial understanding. But by and large, a little well-selected knowledge can go a long way. The aim of this book is to give the reader a wide-ranging understanding of the telecoms industry, right the way from the top-level business processes, through the network technologies, down to the special techniques used in telecoms software. Armed with that understanding, a capable software person should be able to communicate intelligently with telecoms engineers. This book does not replace the many complete and detailed specialist technical texts available. This is a generalist work. It is deliberately light on detail, but it covers most of the areas with which a telecoms software engineer is likely to have to contend. Once this book has got you started, you can go on, if you will, to immerse yourself in the detailed technical works. I am a software engineer, and I assume that my reader is one also. But a software background of undergraduate level is more than enough to make sense of what follows. Finding your way around Telecoms is a complex tangle of technologies and businesses, and to make it understandable we have to cut it up into easy chunks. Figure 2 shows how this book carves up the subject. It is just one of many possible ways of doing this, but I have chosen it to present the material in a sequence which will be least confusing for the reader. To get an appreciation of why telecoms engineering is such a lively business, we start in Chapter 1 by looking at the telecoms market: who the players are, how they get their revenues, what their goals and challenges are, and so on. This is a technical book, not a market analysis, but we need to share some idea of what is going on in the market so that we can appreciate the significance of the technologies on which this book focuses. Chapter 2 introduces some architectural models to help you understand the structure of telecoms networks, and some basic transmission principles. Chapters 3, 4 and 5 are a CookÕs tour of transmission systems, starting with fixed bit transports such as optical fibre, then mobile technologies like UMTS, and ending up with the complex multiplexing systems which make the bit transports usable. Chapters 5 and 6 are a similar tour of circuit mode switching systems, starting with the signaling systems that define the protocols to make the bit transports meaningful, then looking at the more ordinary telecoms switches (telephone exchanges), and lastly the intelligent networks switching technology. Chapters 8 and 9 explain the IP data communications technologies that support the Internet. The applications of these technologies are then reviewed, in particular the World Wide Web and internet telephony. Chapters 10 and 11 then explain the kind of business processes that go on in a telco, and the computing systems that they need to support them. Lastly, Chapter 12 discusses the half dozen software techniques that have evolved to suit the telecoms industry's special needs.
About the Author
Clive Tomlinson has worked for over twenty years as a telecoms software engineer and systems architect,developing, supporting and managing software technology for packet data networks, circuit switched voice networks, and their management systems. Using experience gained through working with many of the world's largest telcos, equipment vendors and software companies, Clive presents a lucid high-level account of telecoms technologies, the structure of the industry, and the special software methods that it uses.
Clive is a regular speaker at technical conferences, and the author and presenter of a number of telecoms training courses.
0201674734AB04062001
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Telecommunications - clearing the mist.,
By Andrew Harcourt (Hilversum, Holland) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Telecommunications: An Introduction for Software Professionals (Paperback)
In these changing times things are getting a bit confusing with thousands of acronyms and buzz words. This book was written for software professionals coming into telecommunications but it is supremely useful to anyone in the industry already. Clive Tomlinson does a very good job of explaining the acronyms, listing all the alternatives for any given technology in a very readable manner. Workers in the Telecommunications industry tend to specialise in one area, but they hear their colleagues talking about other specialities, and usually wish to know more about areas of expertise on the periphery of their own. This book fulfills that need. After reading it you will appreciate what your colleagues on the other side of the office are talking about, and you yourself will gain self respect and be able to converse more intelligently (and get a better job, of course!). When choosing a book on telecommunications it is very important to select one which a)has recently been published, and b) is written by someone who is bang up to date with accurate knowledge. Every three years the technology undergoes a complete quantum leap upgrade, and you have to keep abreast to keep employed. Telecommunications By Clive Tomlinson answers the questions you have always been afraid to ask for fear of looking stupid. It is very easily read with easy to understand diagrams and the main points of each section are highlighted at the side of the page. I thoroughly recommend it.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
