PBX Management via Ethernet
Today most companies use a PABX telephone system of some kind. Business generated using telephone systems is phenomenal and so are the costs incurred. Large corporations
have telephone accounts running into millions each month.
Monitoring call statistics has become a necessity rather than a luxury. Managers can monitor the obvious, such as which staff members are making excessive calls, to
establishing marketing trends and identifying problems or bottlenecks that may exist in a company system.
Traditionally PABX monitoring was done in the following way: a PC would be connected to the serial port of the PABX and a large data file created. This file may be
imported to a management application. Another method was to connect a serial printer to the PABX system resulting in reams of paper. Later innovations included
various intelligent and dumb call logging units (CLU's) that are placed next to the PABX and usually connect to it serially. These devices may or may not have
Ethernet connectivity and would typically download information to a management application supplied by the CLU supplier.
The Multenet solution
Multenet have brought an innovative solution to this problem by their development of thin servers. EtherPADs and PocketPADs enable the connection of any
RS232 serial device, such as a PABX, to an Ethernet network. The Serial to Ethernet converter is programmed with an IP address, Subnet Mask and Gateway
Address compatible with the company's Ethernet Network.
When the PAD is running, it becomes "transparent" passing data to and from the serial device to the application. The PAD contains an embedded Web server making
it easily configurable using a Web Browser. Parameters such as Serial Port Configuration, Ethernet interface and DNS configuration can be easily changed from
anywhere in the world.
As a Data logger, the EtherPAD is hard to beat. The EtherPAD connects to the serial port of the PABX and into the company LAN. Data from the Logger is saved to
memory and can be date and time stamped for convenience. The Logger can be accessed from anywhere on the LAN or WAN and data downloaded via FTP file transfer. The
data file is packaged in such a way as to be easily imported into any spreadsheet application such as Microsoft Excel. The Logger is also capable of e-mailing the
logged data to a pre-programmed Internet e-mail address.
The amount of data saved is selectable by size or time and the Logger is capable of initiating a connection to a remote host or application when the criteria are met
or it will wait passively for an application to connect to it to download the logged PABX data.
The result of this innovation is that calls may be monitored on a national or international basis. As an example a central monitoring application may connect to any
number of EtherPAD Loggers on a WAN and download PABX statistics for a chain of stores. In this way real time management of call statistics and costs may be implemented
with obvious savings in time and money.
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