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tmclabs.GIF (5407 bytes)
September 1999


System 930
Telephony Simulator

Gordon Kapes, Inc.
5520 West Touhy Ave.
Skokie, IL 60077
Ph:847-676-1750
Fx:847-982-0747
Web site:www.gkinc.com  

Price: Starting at $9,988. Contact vendor for details.

Editors' Choice award logo

RATINGS (0-5)
Installation: 5
Documentation: 4.25
Features: 5
GUI: 4.25
Overall: A-


If your R&D people could save the company $15,000 a year in T1 services and still develop a better product, wouldn’t you want them to? To serve that purpose for the CTI industry, consider the System 930 Telephony Simulator, from Gordon Kapes, Inc. (GK)

The 930 is smaller than a milk crate and more powerful than a speeding central office (CO) — literally. A good CO will be happy to sell you lines for T1/E1, ISDN PRI, T1 robbed bit signaling, and analog connections, but the 930 simulates all of this and more. Plus, it’s portable, upgradeable and infinitely customizable — enough adjectives to make even Kramer’s lawyer (on Seinfeld) happy, except that in this case the adjectives aren’t superfluous. We initially saw the 930 at an industry trade show. Its testing lab value was obvious to us, so we decided to give it a test drive to prove — or expose — its roadworthiness.

Installation
With the assistance of a GK engineer, our demo system was running in about a half-hour. The physical connections are the easy part. A wall-mountable AC power adapter provides the 930 with 48 volts at two amps; then, a secondary plug connects between the adapter and the 930 unit, also wall (or rack) mountable. The box also has a safety ground screw, a 25-ping female serial jack, and an audio-out jack. One side of the box also has two main telephony interfaces, each consisting of an RJ-48 connection and a dual-female tip/ring/sleeve jack (less commonly known as “bantam” jacks). The box’s opposite side has four RJ-11 outlets and two 25-pin Amphenol connectors. Finally, the front of the 930 features an on/off physical toggle switch, three indicator lights, and a synchronization indicator for both interfaces. Removing the unit’s two front covers reveals three upgrade slots and a removable motherboard.

Configuring the 930, like most electronics devices, is much more complex than plugging in the hardware. In many cases, configuring the 930 is really a feature: even though the unit remembers and saves settings from previous jobs, different R&D tasks require different telephony settings, so the unit essentially requires reconfiguration for each task. But we see this as a testament to the 930’s usability across many facets of the datacom and telecom worlds. Because the 930 is a black-box device, there is no software to install or configure in the traditional sense. All you really need is a PC with Windows’ built-in HyperTerminal program, with the setting of 9,600 BPS, the standard “8-None-1” setup and VT-100 emulation, although in theory any VT-100 emulator should work. (The numerous setup options are discussed in the features section.)

Documentation
There are three primary documents for the simulator. The first is the online, context-sensitive help file. Pressing the F1 key at any time calls this file. We found that the help given is consistently comprehensive, useful, and well written. The other two documents are reference guides for the T1 ISDN PRI and the T1 robbed bit protocols. Both of these guides exceed 60 pages, and they explain every feature and parameter, without exception. These files are excellent as references, but we feel that the product would be better if there was a “getting started” manual with several examples of real-life usage scenarios. We find that suites designed for telephony testing generally have a steep learning curve, so anything that can be done to make things easier should be done. On a positive note, both reference manuals include a glossary, and both have a section that specifies the new features and fixes of the current version.

Features
The 930’s main menu alone has 21 options to choose from, each sub-menu has from 6 to 15 choices, and there are 5 emulation types supported. In theory, there are nearly 1,000 items that we could write about here. Instead, we’ll cover the highlights.

The first menu option is for the digital interface configuration. This menu has three pages. On the first page, the two 930 interfaces reside under a master control. Pages two and three control them independently. The most important option here is switch emulation, which lets you choose the emulation type. The types include T1 robbed bit signaling, which has its own instruction manual (see the Documentation section), and national ISDN-2, 4ESS custom, 5ESS custom, and DMS100 custom, which all share very similar menu options.

For the remainder of this Features section, the main categories covered will be T1 robbed bit and ISDN PRI. As explained in the user’s manual, national ISDN-2 is the default protocol because public switches use it. 5ESS and DMS100 modes are used by CO switches; 4ESS is used by inter-office switches. T1, of course, is the protocol of choice for many R&D labs and enterprises.

Other highlights of the digital interface configuration menu include framing (D4 superframe or extended), line coding, line build-out, sync source, location (mixed, network side, private network side, user side), channel search (mixed, ascending sequential, descending sequential, clockwise sequential, counterclockwise sequential) and an interface on/off toggle.

The second main menu option is channel configuration, which controls groups of channels or individual channels to be blocked from call processing. Here, there are five choices — four for master control, and a separate “detailed configuration” screen. Master control options include operation, direction, signaling, and inbound routing. The next four sub-pages cover most of the same settings, but on a per-channel, per-interface basis. Channel configuration offers some useful features like ACD groups, FXS/FXO and SAS/SAO signaling, busy signals, and reorder tones.

The third menu option is the numbering plan configuration. Prefixes, terminating digits, timeouts, and the actual dialed numbers are all a part of this screen. In ISDN emulation, this screen offers choices for number mode, caller presentation, and the called number plans for both interfaces.

Options 4 through 14 remain unchanged regardless of which emulation mode you’re using. These are the system configuration options. They include:

  • Analog port configuration: Extension parameters, ACD assignment, voice coder compressions (64K G.711 mu-law or a-law), choice of loop or ground start, and alert failure types. The remaining screens under this option let you control the actual extensions for 32 channels.
  • Recorder/announcer: The simplest menu of the entire system. Its features are used for recording the two system prompts, which are useful for troubleshooting telephony products.
  • Inbound match configuration: Up to 48 extensions can be programmed to synchronize with different ACD groups. These matches can also be set on a per-interface basis.
  • Analog port dialing configuration: This screen lets you choose items like access digits, digit timeouts, and dialing methods (overlap or en-block).
  • Outbound call configuration: The same options as inbound match configuration.
  • ACD configuration: Choices include query depth, queue action, overflow action and hunt method.
  • Redirect configuration: Choose the prefix number, inbound number, type of number, action and destination.
  • Audio monitor configuration: Output on/off, mode, source, DCN/Port setup.
  • Security configuration: Login, password, VT-100 compatibility, automatic logoff, inactivity timeout
  • Call status: Displays current call data, called/caller number modes, connect resources.
  • Transmission status: Synchronization status, transmit/receive slips, alarms, etc.

Options 16, 18, 19, 20, and 21 also remain the same in either emulation mode. Option 16 is the tone connect test function — it uses variables of the tone number, destination, and DCN/Port. Option 18 is data capture — it captures the current system information, such as the system status, screen mode, calls to capture, source, day, hour, and minute.

Selection 19 is one of the most important menus: it’s the call generator configuration. In T1 mode, you can set the number of active calls, the time between calls and cycles, the call starting interval, the called number, the calling mode, the setup time limit, and the connect action. You’ll also find a monitor here, which shows outbound/inbound and sent/received data of the setup, proceed, progress, alerts, connect, and disconnect signals.

Finally, option 20 is for saving multiple system configurations — up to six different profiles are allowed, plus the factory defaults profile — and option 21 provides the quick system status, used to show a quick view of the analog interface and both digital interfaces and whether or not each channel is synchronized.

Menu item 15 is the main data monitor. In T1 robbed bit mode this screen shows, by channel, the inbound hex data, inbound binary signaling bits, and outbound binary signaling bits. The section is divided into three screens, one each for digital interface one, digital interface two, and analog ports. In ISDN mode, only the inbound hex screens are enabled.

Item 17 is the digital interface test function. In T1 mode, it shows only the loopback and alarm status, but in ISDN mode, this screen includes more data, like the loopback, send alarm, information transfer rate, channel ID, network facility service, ISDN proceeding, alerting and progress data, local tones, startup/format data, and more.

Operational Testing
The 930 interface is easy to use, and its commands are based on function keys because it’s run through a terminal emulator. For example, <ESC> returns to the main menu; <F3> and <F4> represent forward and back; and <F1> goes to the help menu. An indicator in the screen’s upper right corner reminds you of which screen you’re currently viewing, and an asterisk denotes the default selection for each menu option.

A strange thing did happen with this interface, though: twice, it spontaneously inverted its color scheme by going to a black background and white text, continuing to function normally, and spontaneously reverting back to the original black-on-white scheme. This didn’t seem to have any effect on the 930’s operation, and we suspect that it must have been an obscure Windows problem. None of us had seen it happen before, so we’re wondering if anyone else who uses this product might have experienced the same thing. If you have, send us e-mail!

While testing the 930, we also happened to be testing an Aculab T1 board, as well as an ISDN VoIP-enabled router. This was convenient; we were able to test both products with the new simulator. The router was the easy one, because the device had a line auto-detect feature, and we already knew the proper setting because we had tested it with real ISDN lines, installed by our RBOC just days before.

Getting the Aculab board to work with the 930 proved more difficult. It took about a dozen telephone calls and e-mail messages to both Aculab and Gordon Kapes engineers, and as of the deadline for this review, we still don’t have the two devices talking to each other. However, both vendors told us that they’ve worked with the other in the past, so we’re optimistic about the products interoperating in the lab soon.

Another aspect of using the 930 is making sure that you use it right. That may sound silly, but there is much to be overlooked here by an inexperienced technician. Such a complex device is not meant to be a substitute for your basic “dumb” analog line simulator, but then, the numerous dumb simulators on the market can’t touch the 930 in terms of features or available protocols. For example, when we’re testing a CTI product in our lab and we need a simulated analog dial tone, we just attach a normal telephone wire to a simulator from Teltone, and there’s an instant CO on our desks. But, if we need multiple ISDN PRI hunt groups, a dozen different dialing plans, more than one connection-based telephony action, and constant monitoring of every data bit, then the Teltone black box would be useless.

We value such black boxes and we use them extensively, but when the setup needs get complicated, a more advanced, more customizable product is needed. And, while some black boxes can emulate basic ISDN features, there’s not one that we know of that can do T1 robbed bit, or any of the ESS/DMS emulations. That’s where the 930 will be useful.

Room For Improvement
If we had the choice of improving one thing, we would choose to add a Windows interface. Many technical people prefer the easy-to-learn, easy-to-use terminal emulation, but there are advantages to using a regular Windows screen, as well. It would be easier to resize, easier to cut and paste 930 data into other applications, and it would make available numerous logging features that currently don’t exist. We also feel that although the documentation is comprehensive on the technical and features side, it could greatly benefit from the inclusion of an overview/getting-started book, plus a better glossary and more conversions/explanations of telecom concepts into the MIS realm. Any of these measures would also accomplish the goal of lessening the 930’s steep (though worthwhile) learning curve, making it easier to use.

Conclusion
We often see marketing materials proclaiming “all-in-one” CTI solutions from companies that don’t understand their customers’ particular needs. CTI is not a shrink-wrapped business, so very few companies can live up to those claims. However, the System 930 Telephony Simulator actually exceeds that claim — for R&D departments in particular, this testing tool can be almost anything you need it to be. We plan to use one for T1 testing in the future, but for every laboratory, the 930 can serve a slightly different purpose. In our opinion it will serve them well, so it has earned our Editor’s Choice award.







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