Subject: 5. How should a BRI be provisioned for a Pipeline 50?

In the United States, BRIs tend to come in two basic flavors: either NI-1, or AT&T "Custom" Point-to-Point. NI-1 is a Bellcore standard that the major switch manufacturers have agreed to support; AT&T does support it in their switches, but they still promote their own customized way of dealing with a BRI (as it's simpler and easier to use); as a result, most local telcos with AT&T 4ESS or 5ESS switches choose to offer "AT&T Custom" over NI-1.

The other prevalent ISDN-capable switches in the U.S. are Northern Telecom DMS-100s; Nortel supports only NI-1 (at least until it's superseded by another standard).

With an NI-1 switch, the user must find out the Service Profile IDs (SPIDs) associated with the BRI, and enter them in the appropriate fields in the main "Configure..." menu. Since the local telephone company assigns the SPIDs, only it can inform you what they are (and they have been known to get them wrong).

With a BRI provisioned as AT&T custom Point-to-Point, the user merely needs to enter the telephone number associated with their line.


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