Keeping your business competitive in today's fast-paced global economy requires
trustworthy, effective communications solutions. Advanced fax platforms for fax-based
messaging programs contribute significant savings for those companies that depend heavily
on inter-office faxing. Growing demands for performance and processing power have led
manufacturers to PCI-based fax solutions. Along these lines, Dialogic now provides the
CPi/400 PCI.
It is estimated that network administrators will see PCI systems widely used in the
enterprise server market in only a few years. Many applications such as LAN-based faxing
and fax-on-demand will need multi-line capabilities and PCI compatibility. All of these
requirements are addressed by Dialogic's CPi/400PCI fax board.
INSTALLATION/DOCUMENTATION
After removing the CPi/400 PCI fax board from its box, we powered down a computer with a
Pentium 233 MHz processor and 32 MB RAM, running Windows NT, and plugged the CPi/400 PCI
in an open 16-bit PCI slot. We turned the computer on, inserted the 3.5" disk that
came with the board, and ran the setup file. From there, the installation wizard took care
of most of the work. We mainly had to keep a watchful eye for prompts and click the Next
button.
To complete the installation, we connected the board to the phone jack via an RJ11
wire. About the only difficulty during the whole procedure was the physical process of
getting the board into the computer. If you have seen four-port fax boards before, then
you should be aware of the size. This one was no exception, and we had to do some deft
maneuvering to make it fit inside the chassis.
In addition to the fax board, we received the Dialogic Reference Manual for Windows NT
2.0 and the Dialogic Developer's Kit Programmer's Reference for Windows NT 2.0. These
manuals were designed for software developers in the Windows NT environment. The only
reference material provided for the physical installation and configuration of the board
was a small insert, but that proved to be adequate for the job.
FEATURES
The CPi/400 PCI is designed to optimize network-based fax servers and customized
applications. The board is specifically designed for medium fax volume. The boards are PCI
2.1 compliant and are stackable, allowing up to 32 ports in one chassis. With four 14.4
KBPS modems on board, the CPi/400 PCI is also poised to generate medium-sized fax volume.
In addition, the fax board makes use of the following features:
- MH, MR, and MMR compression
- Quick ASCII to TIFF conversion
- PCX on the fly
- ASCII on TIFF overlay
- Easy integration with Microsoft Windows NT
- Answer & dial Error correction mode (ECM)
- Touch-tone detection (DTMF)
- Binary file transfer (BFT)
- T.30 subaddressing compression
- Data rates
- V.17-14.4 Kb/s, 12 Kb/s, 9600 b/s, 7200 b/s
- V.33-14.4 Kb/s, 12 Kb/s
- V.29-9600 b/s, 7200 b/s
- V.27-4800 b/s, 2400 b/s
- Board switch allows the administrator to distinguish between multiple boards within a
PCI chassis
OPERATIONAL TESTING
We tested the CPi/400 PCI fax board with a LAN fax program we had in-house. Our goal in
this was to determine whether the board worked from the first installation, or if we were
going to have to customize it to meet our requirements. We were not disappointed, as the
CPi/400 PCI certainly proved capable of handling the fax volume we generated with the LAN
fax program from the lab.
ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT
The CPi/400 PCI fax board performed admirably in its fax functionality. Aside from the
rather cumbersome nature of four-port fax boards, the only aspect of the package that we
found lacking was the absence of a friendly user interface for use as a troubleshooting
utility. We would have appreciated a nice GUI where we could visually follow the fax, but
we knew the faxes were getting to their destinations, so this really didn't trouble us
much.
CONCLUSION
PCI is the ideal solution the delivery of faxes through a network server. The CPi/400 PCI
is a four-port fax board, and is stackable to 32 ports, which makes it cost effective. The
system is especially useful for the ever popular fields of LAN faxes, fax-on-demand, and
service bureaus. In addition, the demand for PCI-based faxing is increasing, which puts
current PCI-based solutions in an opportune situation, poised to ride the swell of
companies looking for these solutions.
With many large corporations, the cost of faxing between different departments and
locations dwarves the cost of faxing to other companies, especially in the case of a
company that is spread out across different countries. Having a LAN/WAN based solution can
prove to be a huge money saver. |
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