In telecommunications, a channel bank is a device that performs multiplexing or demultiplexing ("demux") of a group of communications channels, such as analog or digital telephone lines, into one channel of higher bandwidth or higher digital bit rate, such as a DS-1 (T1) circuit.
A channel bank may be located in a telephone exchange, or in an enterprise's telephone closet or enclosure where it "breaks out" individual telephone lines from a high-capacity telephone trunk line connected to the central telephone office, or the enterprise's PBX system.
A working example in the finance industry is to provide several automatic ringdown (ARD) lines over a single T-1.
Famous quotes containing the words channel and/or bank:
“How old the world is! I walk between two eternities.... What is my fleeting existence in comparison with that decaying rock, that valley digging its channel ever deeper, that forest that is tottering and those great masses above my head about to fall? I see the marble of tombs crumbling into dust; and yet I don’t want to die!”
—Denis Diderot (1713–1784)
“I have passed down the river before sunrise on a summer morning, between fields of lilies still shut in sleep; and when, at length, the flakes of sunlight from over the bank fell on the surface of the water, whole fields of white blossoms seemed to flash open before me, as I floated along, like the unfolding of a banner, so sensible is this flower to the influence of the sun’s rays.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)