July 1998

Telephone Line Emulator

Teltone Corporation
22121 20th Avenue SE
Bothell, WA 98021-4408
Ph: 800-426-3926; Fx: 425-487-2288
E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: www.teltone.com

Pricing: $1,995 (base unit); $395 each for advanced test and international modules.

RATINGS (0-5)

Installation: 5
Documentation: 5
Features: 5
Overall: A

The Telephone Line Emulator is, for its price, an extremely powerful and feature-rich product, more akin to a portable PBX than a simple analog line simulator. While telephony developers may prefer more specialized (and expensive) testing equipment, users with less rigorous demands may opt for the Telephone Line Emulator. For example, users who would like to stage trade show demonstrations or sales pitches might find that the Emulator is ideal, a veritable PBX-in-a-briefcase.

INSTALLATION
The Telephone Line Emulator device, which weighs seven pounds, is about the size of an older laptop PC. Users can plug in four analog devices, each supporting three lines. Incidentally, the product arrives with its own cabling (always a welcome touch), including both 9-pin and 25-pin serial adapters. AC power comes from a standard CPU power cable.

We connected the Telephone Line Emulator to a Windows NT machine. However, we're told that the software works equally well under Windows 95. Unfortunately, OS/2 and Unix operating systems are not currently supported.

Setting up the configuration software is as simple as setting up the hardware. The software is available on a 3.5" floppy disk or through Teltone's Web site. After we installed the administration program (which used just one megabyte of disk space), we chose a COM port and switched on the Emulator unit, which was automatically queried by the software.

The active configuration will appear in the main setup screen, and the unit name will appear in the title bar. Keep in mind that this serial connection is needed only for sending configurations - the potentially tedious process of designing a configuration works fine with the unit offline.

DOCUMENTATION
The documentation was brief, filling but 62 pages; however, it included plenty of screen shots and covered all the pertinent topics in adequate detail. All the same, there was definitely too much jargon. We would like to see a more in-depth glossary.

We found that the online help menu's "find" file was much faster and simpler than the typical Windows search-and-display methodology. In addition, the online documentation included almost all of the printed material.

FEATURES AND OPERATIONAL TESTING
We can't possibly document all of the Emulator's features here: There just isn't enough space. We must point out, however, that the most practical feature is the product's 2-port/4-port setting, which lets a user have dual 2-port simulators or a single 4-port unit - with the 2-port setting, two engineers could share one unit.

Most features are accessible from the Screens pull-down menu. Among the options that can be customized through this menu are audio tones, busy signals, call waiting, caller ID, dial tones, metering tones, phone numbers, ring and number unobtainable tones, voice messages (in the form of importable .WAV files), and more. Most of these various tones can be altered for precise frequency, length, and decibel settings, and most include an indicated margin of error.

Eight additional menus are found on the main screen, including options for general setup, on-hook, call initiation, calls to the Emulator, calls to other lines, after answer, during the call, and ending the call. There are also several options for sending and querying the various configurations, plus a button to restore default system options. Default port configurations can be reset through a button on the Emulator's face.

The base product provides for only two configurations, but the enhanced versions - that is, the advanced simulator and international packages - permit up to 16 configurations. These come pre-programmed: There are 11 international setups and 5 North American setups. However, with respect to the international group, Teltone makes no promises: International settings are apt to change, and they don't reflect many of the options available in the United States or in Canada. However, Teltone does provide pointers toward its source information, which are extremely useful for researching further details on international telephony settings.

Other features of the Emulator include central office-grade SLICs (Subscriber Line Interface Circuit), programmable attenuation, line impedance, DSP-based hardware, a user-serviceable fuse, 100- or 240-volt operation, and an audio jack for line monitoring. With the add-ons, you also get options to simulate satellite delay, white noise, and echo.

ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT
Things we liked about using the Emulator include the great instruction manual, the simple programming processes, and the intuitive methods of importing and exporting configurations and .WAV files. Yet, despite these advantages, which should promote ease of use, the Emulator still presents users with a steep learning curve. While users can learn the product's main features in a few days, they will find that mastering the entire feature set and all of the Emulator's nuances will take some time. Perhaps this is inevitable, given the product's many features. Nonetheless, we'd like to see a smarter initial setup: A Teltone engineer confirmed that the unit's serial port is a dumb port, so to make the software check for a connection, you have to click the help/about option, which sends out a query.

CONCLUSION
In short, we love the unit. However, we suppose that some of its features go beyond the normal needs (and perhaps above the heads) of its target audience. Less sophisticated simulators are available, but many users will be attracted to the Emulator, which offers an extensive feature set at a reasonable price. Even with both the add-on modules (the Advanced Test and International modules), the Emulator still costs less than $3,000, which is considerably less than the most sophisticated, developer-grade testing equipment. Thus, Teltone's Telephone Line Simulator occupies a middle ground between inexpensive (but unsophisticated) simulators and highly capable (but costly) test equipment.

We hear that an updated version is due out soon, possibly within a year. Once it does appear, we hope the new version provides even more features, equally clear documentation, and the same competitive pricing.