I have a new problem now. My customer has upgraded to CIX670 for the ISDN but now, they need to have a Billing software to account for different departments. Initially, we proposed them with serial link using a BSIS. Since I do not have the eManager, we let the Toshiba guys do the work. But now, the customer wanted to have the PC placed far away so, we decided to connect the CIX to their network and get the SMDR data from there.

Eveything went well until the IT guy refused to allow us access until he knows what are the CIX's transfer rate as he is worried about us sucking away the bandwidth.

So, does anyone know about the CIX's bandwidth as the Toshiba guy is also clueless about it?

Amongst others, I have a 3 site tv station and all three switches are networked on a VPN - and there has never been an issue with the phone switches sucking all the bandwidth - even with video feeds and centralized voice mail! What the heck does your network handle, anyways?

The SMDRoIP is sent as tcp/ip packets. Therefore it is the same as any other DATA traffic on the LAN. This has nothing to do with VoIP it's just regular data.

I would assume that SMDRoIP would transmit one or possibly two IP packets per call, barely enough to record with a packet sniffer. Serial SMDR puts out one line of 80 characters per call.

Thanks guys.

If that is the case, I think the IT Guy is a bit too, well, aprehensive since the Toshiba equipment is considered an "outsider" to his so-called well-planned Network system.

If it still does not convince him, then its back to the BSIS with a PPTC cable and the Manager has to walk all the way down to the storeroom. Ha ha ha ha.

You can test it out for a week so he can analyze the bandwidth use and decide afterwards. Besides, what bandwidth would you be sucking up? If need be, get a cheap hub or switch just for integration.

Or you could just run a cat5 cable from the phone system directly to the call accounting computer. You get the distance of networking without touching his precious network.

Darn IT guys..

Does your call billing software support SMDR over LAN?

Another option is serial to ethernet adapters like this one .

Well, we heard from the main Toshiba distributors that the new CIX is capable of transmitting SMDR over ethernet.

Luckily, the customer has upgraded their processor card from CTX to CIX recently and so, indirectly, they will be the first guinea.....er, customer to have this feature.

Hopefully, in March, once I get through to the IT guy, we can try it out. But if he still say no, we'll have to use the BSIS for the serial link to get the SMDR data.

The IP SMDR works very well but you have to make sure that the call accounting software supports it. TAPIT does support it. Each call record is about 90 bytes so the IT guy can keep his shorts on. I've have used the BSIS sucessfully at about 80 or 90 feet using cat 3 station cabling at 1200 bps. I have also used short-haul modems at distances of about 700 feet.

Haha.... so true

I think they are realy starting to feel the pressure because we are all turning into "IT" guys...