Practice Test Geeks(CTE) Certified Telecommunications Executive Practice Test
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System Architecture & Design Flashcards

7 cards from real CTE practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.

Read the first 7 System Architecture & Design flashcards as text

  1. In a carrier-grade telecom architecture, what does the term 'five nines' availability mean?

    Answer: 99.999% uptime, allowing ~5.26 minutes downtime per year

    Five nines (99.999%) availability equates to approximately 5.26 minutes of allowable downtime per year, the standard benchmark for carrier-grade systems.

  2. Which architectural pattern best supports independent scaling of individual telecom microservices like billing, provisioning, and routing?

    Answer: Microservices architecture with containerization

    Microservices architecture with containerization allows each telecom function to be deployed, scaled, and updated independently, reducing blast radius of failures.

  3. A telecommunications company is designing a network that must survive the loss of an entire geographic region. Which design principle should be prioritized?

    Answer: Geographic redundancy with active-active or active-passive failover

    Geographic redundancy ensures that regional disasters do not cause a total outage, using active-active or active-passive configurations across dispersed sites.

  4. What is the primary function of a Session Border Controller (SBC) in a VoIP network architecture?

    Answer: To manage and secure real-time communication sessions at network borders

    An SBC controls the signaling and media streams of VoIP calls at network borders, providing security, interoperability, and QoS enforcement.

  5. In telecom network design, what is the role of a Policy and Charging Rules Function (PCRF)?

    Answer: To define and enforce QoS policies and charging rules for data sessions

    PCRF is a core component of the LTE/4G architecture that determines QoS policies and charging rules for subscriber data sessions in real time.

  6. Which transmission architecture uses a single fiber strand to carry multiple wavelengths of light simultaneously, multiplying capacity?

    Answer: Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM)

    DWDM transmits multiple optical signals on a single fiber by assigning each signal a different wavelength (color), dramatically increasing fiber capacity.

  7. When designing a telecom OSS/BSS architecture, what does 'northbound interface' refer to?

    Answer: APIs exposed by a network element to higher-level management systems

    Northbound interfaces are APIs exposed upward toward higher-layer management or orchestration systems, while southbound interfaces communicate downward to network elements.