How Can One Data Circuit Turn Into 24 Telephone Lines?
Turning 24 lines into one and back into 24 again is a fascinating aspect of Broadband or DS1. Here’s how it works: At one end of the Broadband or DS1(the central office, for example), each of the 24 phone lines is encoded to a digital format, much like a CD recording. Then, the packets of data from each line are transmitted in sequence into a single data stream. The device that makes this process possible is called a “channel bank,” which is a small digital telephone system with an input for Broadband or DS1 and 24 outputs, one for each telephone line. At the other end of the Broadband or DS1 (the TAS, for example), another channel bank reverses the process by separating the data stream into the original 24 distinct data packets representing each phone line. The data is then decoded from digits back into the 24 telephone (voice) lines.
