PDF of this tutorialThe move toward open, standards-based systems has revolutionized the computer telephony (CT) industry. In fact, open systems have been the fastest growing segment of the CT market for several years, and half of these systems have been deployed by telephone companies (telcos) and wireless carriers. There are a number of reasons for these changes. Open systems have benefited from improvements in personal computer (PC) hardware and software, as well as from advances in digital signal processing (DSP) technology. As a result, flexible, high-performance systems are scalable to thousands of ports while remaining cost-effective for use in telco networks. In addition, fault-tolerant chassis, distributed software architecture, and N+1 redundancy have succeeded in meeting the demanding reliability requirements of network operators.
One of the remaining hurdles facing open CT systems is serviceability. CT systems used in public networks must be extremely reliable and easy to repair without system downtime. In addition, network operation requires first-rate administrative and diagnostic capabilities to keep services up and running.
