Huffman Trucking Telephony Systems

Huffman Trucking Telephony Systems

Sammy Shanks

University of Phoenix

Huffman Trucking is a national logistics and transportation services company that operates terminal hubs in Los Angeles, California, St. Louis, Missouri, and Bayonne, New Jersey, along with a central maintenance facility in Cleveland, Ohio. Each of the terminal hubs consist of both an office and a plant, and the maintenance facility is also the site of the corporate headquarters. The company's voice communications needs are handled by various telephony systems installed at each location. Determining the specifications and services offered by these systems is somewhat difficult given the relatively small amount of information provided by the company through its corporate website and the published network diagrams of each location.

Types of Telephony Systems

Huffman's network diagrams indicate that company uses both analog and digital telephony system technologies. The Los Angeles and Bayonne hubs both appear to have dual POTS-based private branch exchange (PBX) systems installed on their respective networks, one to serve the office and the other for the plant facility. The Cleveland and St. Louis locations, on the other hand, have Avaya digital phone systems installed on their networks. These systems are assumed to be VoIP telephony servers, though some Avaya systems are configurable to serve as either traditional phone systems or IP telephony servers (Avaya, Inc., 2007).

The POTS-based PBX systems allow Huffman to set up multiple internal phone extensions to be routed through regular PSTN telephone lines, whereas the VoIP telephony servers enable the company's calls to be digitized and transmitted via computer networks. Though the traditional PBX system is a well-established form of communications technology, the newer VoIP system is considered by its proponents to be more versatile than traditional PBX in that a single VoIP system can be setup to handle the calls of multiple offices regardless of their relative location (Avaya, Inc., 2007). VoIP systems can also substantially reduce long distance calling costs, both domestically and internationally (Avaya, Inc.). This feature may be of particular importance to Huffman due to its dispersed locations across the country and because the company intends to pursue new overseas shipping opportunities as part of its strategic growth initiatives over the coming year (University of Phoenix, 2005).

Physical Extent of Systems

The physical extent of the telephony systems installed at each of Huffman's locations cannot be determined conclusively, as neither the network diagrams nor the internal website provide any layout, square footage or cable distance specifications. Also, very little explicit information is provided regarding the number of telephone extensions serviced by each system, though it may be reasonable to presume that an extension accompanies each illustrated workstation.

The diagram for the Los Angeles hub indicates that there are at least eleven telephone extensions stemming from the office PBX system, while the Bayonne hub only shows three extensions. In both diagrams, no extensions are shown for the plant PBX systems. The Cleveland and St. Louis diagrams do not offer any details on the digital lines serviced by the IP telephony server; however, there may be at least 67 lines at each office based on the number of diagrammed terminals. The line counts for these locations are likely understated given that some of the executive and administrative staff listed on Huffman's Human Resources website may not work under the various departments noted under the network diagrams' terminals. That said, it still appears as though the IP telephony servers are servicing a larger