Private lines refer to communications transmission facilities that are
leased from telecommunications providers by individuals or companies for
their exclusive use.Many people are using private lines, called digital subscriber lines, to
gain access to the Internet, rather than using the analog
subscriber lines provided by telecommunications
companies for regular telephone service.
Digital subscriber lines offer digital
access to a network at a variety of speeds.
Corporations have been using private line service for years to link their
private branch exchange (PBX) switches and packet switches into private
local, national, and international networks. Corporations
with enough communications traffic lease transmission facilities to connect
their switches, computers and other devices to create regional, national and
international private networks.
When a person or company leases a private line, the facility can only be
used by that person or company, and not by anyone else. Private lines can be
leased by the month or the year, and at data rates ranging from 56 Kb/s up
to gigabits per second.
If you work for a medium- to large-sized company, your company leases
voice transmission facilities to connect its PBX to both the central office
circuit switches of both its local exchange and long distance carriers. In
addition, your company probably leases private lines to connect its data
packet switches to the packet switches in regional and national data
networks.
If you work for a very large company with multiple locations, your
company probably has created its own voice and data networks by linking all
its locations together with leased private lines -- even internationally.
Leasing private lines is much cheaper for a company than using the
so-called 'public' switched network, since the company is using its own
privately owned voice and data switches to route much of its interoffice
traffic.
One caveat: Transmission facilities that link
switches together are called trunks, but the telecommunications industry
uses the term "lines" when referring to leased switch-to-switch trunking
facilities.
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