I just got back from California. Where I had some NorTel familiarization training. I met some really great professionals, including: Jim Anderson (US West), Darrin B. Allison (Urban Media), and Randy Smith (RCS Teletronics). I learned enough about phone systems to start digging into the docs here at home. I programmed my first phone this week and have been getting extensive exposure to the switch.

Overall, the Nortel Switches are just overgrown underfed Macs. There based off of the 68xxx processor and they still use overlays for memory management. The most common interface is a command line off of the switch. It consists of a myriad of terse and sometimes senseless mnemonics. You spend hours digging through dense manuals looking for tiny snippets of information that is usally scattered accross many of the 6 manuals. I think their programmers need to work harder so the tech writing team can have a break.