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Appendix A

Glossary












AG board See Alliance Generation board.
AG configuration file A text file containing configuration information for the AG boards in a system. When agmon runs, it configures the boards as described in this file.
agmon Utility program which reads a configuration file and uses it to load and monitor the AG hardware.
AIS See Alarm Indication Signal.
Alarm Indication Signal (AIS)
A T1 and E1 transmission alarm signal that replaces the normal traffic signal when a maintenance alarm indication has been activated. An AIS is a signal transmitted downstream indicating that an upstream failure has occurred. See also blue alarm, red alarm, yellow alarm.
Alliance Generation (AG) board
A member of Natural MicroSystems' Alliance Generation (AG) family of telephony and voice processing hardware products.
asynchronous programming
Enables concurrent processing between hardware boards and the host CPU. The application initiates telephony functions on the AG board and continues its own processing instead of waiting for events from the AG board to arrive. CT Access supports this model.
B8ZS Binary 8 Zero Substitution, a technique used to maintain required ones density in T1 communications.
blue alarm One of the three alarms to indicate problems with T1/E1 transmissions. The blue alarm occurs when two consecutive frames have fewer than three zeros in the data stream. A blue alarm sends 1s in all bits of all timeslots. Also known as the AIS (Alarm Indication Signal). See also AIS, red alarm, yellow alarm.
CEPT Conference of European Postal and Telecommunications administrations; a European telephony standards committee.
CEPT E1 A standard used in Europe for digital telephone carriers. CEPT E1 is similar to T1 but operates at 2.048 Mbps and has 32 channels instead of T1's 24. Also referred to as E1.
channel An electronic communications path. In digital telephony, a channel usually refers to a separate connection carried on a digital trunk.
coprocessor A microprocessor on the AG board. Runs manager code to enable high level communication between the host and the other AG board resources (DSP and MVIP).
CT Access Natural MicroSystems' development environment for telephony applications.
Digital Signal Processor
See DSP.
DSP Digital Signal Processor; a microprocessor that is designed to perform the calculations required for voice processing.
E1 A standard used in Europe for digital telephone carriers. E1 is similar to T1 but operates at 2.048 Mbps and has 32 channels instead of T1's 24.
e1stat A utility shipped with AG Access that lets you monitor the status of an E1 trunk, including alarm states, errored and failed seconds, bit error rate violations, framing slips and framer synchronization state.
events In CT Access, data structures that contain notification of certain conditions or state changes sent from the hardware or service to the application program. All CT Access events are represented as a C data structure. The structure informs the application what event occurred and provides additional information specific to the event.
MVIP Multi-Vendor Integration Protocol; a PCM digital bus standard for integrating various board vendors. Facilitates software-controlled digital switching within the PC chassis. MVIP interconnects switching and telephony processing boards on a PC.
NMS Natural MicroSystems Corporation.
ones density The requirement for digital transmission lines in the PSTN that eight consecutive zeros cannot exist is a digital data transmission. On a T1 line, zero (0) means no voltage, no pulse.
port An external connection between the MVIP bus and anything else, including telephone trunks, human operators, voice processors, fax processors.
red alarm One of the three alarms to indicate problems with T1/E1 transmissions. A red alarm is generated for a locally detected failure such as loss of synchronization for 2.5 seconds. See also blue alarm, yellow alarm.
runfile A module of basic low-level software which an AG board requires to operate. The runfile for a board is specified in the AG configuration file. When agmon runs, it transfers the runfile from the host into on-board memory.
services In CT Access, a group of logically related telephony functions. A service may be implemented on multiple hardware boards. No matter what hardware is providing the functionality, all services with the same functionality have a standard API. This allows device independent programming.
stream A group of timeslots. Typically, this term refers to the entire set of timeslots on a trunk, or the mapping of those timeslots onto the MVIP bus.
synchronous function A function that does not return until its operation is complete.
T1 A standard for telephone transmission that multiplexes up to 24 channels on a single 1.544 Mbps carrier.
t1stat A utility shipped with AG Access that lets you monitor the status of a T1 trunk, including alarm states, errored and failed seconds, bit error rate violations, framing slips and framer synchronization state.
TCP See Trunk Control Program.
timeslot On a digital trunk and on the MVIP bus, information in each channel is time-division multiplexed into a single continuous stream of data. The interval in which each channel broadcasts is called a timeslot.
trunk A transmission channel connecting two switching machines.
Trunk Control Program (TCP)
A software module designed to run in an AG board's on-board memory, which interfaces a host application with an analog or digital trunk running a certain protocol. The TCP to use is specified in the AG configuration file, and is transferred to the AG board by agmon.
yellow alarm One of the three alarms to indicate problems with T1/E1 transmissions. An alarm signal sent back toward the source of a failed transmit circuit in a T1 transmission path. A yellow sends zeros in bit two of all timeslots. See also blue alarm, red alarm.
ZCS Zero Code Suppression; the insertion of a one bit to prevent the transmission of eight or more consecutive zero bits. Used primarily with T1 facilities which require a minimum ones density. See also ones density.

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