Maximizing Uptime for Telephony Hardware

Telephony hardware is a critical component of any telephony system. When reliability is a concern, it's important to choose telephony hardware that will offer high availability.

Our recommendations for hardware vary depending on the end-user's budget:

• For low budget one or two line configurations or Windows 98/ME configurations, we recommend using top brand voice modems. US Robotics/3Com are probably the de-facto standard voice modems. ZOOM is also an excellent brand. Model numbers for all voice modems are constantly changing, so it's difficult to comment on any specific model within the brands. However, our experiences and our customers' experiences with these brands have all been generally excellent.
• On a Windows NT or 2000 we recommend using Brooktrout telephony cards. Brooktrout acquired its telephony business from Lucent (the old Rhetorex brand), so these cards and their drivers have been around for a long time and used in many different applications. Brooktrout cards provide excellent TAPI support and work well with Active Call Center.
• On Windows XP (and also NT/2000) certain Dialogic cards may be used. We have tested the Dialogic D/4PCI under XP with excellent results.

We also recommend taking a close look at external line monitoring devices. These external hardware devices are capable of detecting when Active Call Center is not answering a phone line and then automatically rebooting the computer system if this condition arises. One such product we have tested with Active Call Center is the Remote Power On/Off unit made by Server Technology, Inc. (www.servertech.com). At under $200, these units provide an excellent watchdog for any Active Call Center telephony system.