Talk:Bell-Northern Research

message: The history reads as if the world went directly from step (or at least crossbar) directly to digital. The 1A ESS deserves a significant discussion (there's a Wikipedia stub for ESS, but no history of the Bell Labs/WeCo product) as an intermediary. The article cites the SP-1, but not its predessor, the 1ESS.
BNR got into the next-gen switching world when it first became feasible to digitize voice samples and thereby treat the data plane as a digital machine as well as the control plane, and to a lesser extent, the signalling plane, which had already been pioneered by others.
I would write this up myself, but I don't know the dates and details of the No. 1 ESS. It would be very helpful if someone who does know this would add a brief discussion here and perhaps expand it in a separate article.
Davehood 01:35, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Am  I the only person at Wikipedia who sees a danger in the "no original research" policy? I just came here from another Wikipedia page where I explained my thoughts in this regard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Burroughs_Corporation#B80_series I expect no one will read this for a while - but hopefully someone will discover it before it becomes an archaeological artefact :-) btw hi to Hugh if he is still around? Ottawahitech (talk) 01:32, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Computerization

message: Edward G. Nilges spinoza1111 spinoza1111@yahoo.com added information based on employment at BNR 1981-1986Spinoza1111 09:56, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Slogans

message: The sentence in the first paragraph on BNR losing its innovative and successful organization after being absorbed into Nortel is speculative. The statement about John Roth perceiving the use of proprietary technology as being part of "the problem" isn't really true, to my recollection. RISC and CISC technology doesn't play a role in the overall layering of the architecture (it is only at the microprocessor level, and the distinction pretty much went away during the 1990s), and in fact the traditional DMS product software loads underwent evolutionary changes that increased their layering, in order to improve maintainability.
219.77.104.213 04:35, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: When BCE gave up control of Nortel, Nortel assumed majority ownership of BNR, and once BCE divested itself of Nortel, Nortel took over complete ownership. The majority of BNR's work in the 1990s was for Nortel, and as BCE pursued its convergence strategy, it was increasing its R&D in other business units, so it was sensible from Bell Canada's point of view to dissolve its joint R&D partnership.
Nortel still uses "proprietary technology", for its DMS switches at least, and I suspect that's something that kept BNR in the telecom game in the first place.  It also meant BNR had to have smart people working for them, which is always a good thing for the company as well as smart people who would otherwise be stuck in boring jobs.  Nevertheless, it was quite clear to me and co-workers that BNR lost effectiveness rapidly when it became Nortel.  Nortel , being concerned with counting beans, never understood or valued BNR's organization, which was concerned with solving our customers' problems and one-upping AT&T and DSC.  Washi (talk) 21:00, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

text: Recall digital switches were first developed at the birth of the modern computer industry, and so companies such as AT&T and BNR pretty much had to develop their own proprietary equipment. The latest incarnation of DMS can run on industry standard compact PCI and ATCA platforms. The remaining proprietary platform for new DMS installations is a multiple-CPU (PowerPC) platform, designed to run the legacy DMS software base with as few changes as possible and yet realize the benefit of multiple processors. It was a very innovative project that was developed by Nortel after it had fully integrated BNR's organization (for Nortel R&D). Its industry-leading optical long haul work that was so profitable with the rise of the Internet was also done as BNR became more and more integrated with Nortel throughout the 1990s. Isaac Lin (talk) 17:19, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Speculative and inappropriate statements 

message: As a co-op student at BNR in 1990, I often heard the place referred to as the "Big Nerd Ranch".
As a software designer there in the mid 90s, I heard this term too, to my amusement.  Now I only remember it with melancholy. Washi (talk) 20:51, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nicknames 

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