Exchange data link

An exchange data link helps you overcome some of the problems associated with channel associated signaling protocols, by exploiting the host access control links that many switches provide.

Figure 1. The exchange data link connection
This diagram shows a telephone switch directly connected via an exchange data link on an RS232 (V24) cable to a system.

An exchange data link passes telephony event information and traffic statistics to a computer, and can also allow the computer some control over the switch. This is commonly known as computer-telephony integration (CTI). If your switch supports CTI, you can use a Blueworx Voice Response exchange data link to provide the signaling functions that are not provided by the channel associated signaling protocol. For example:

The following types of exchange data link are provided with Blueworx Voice Response and require no additional programming:

To take advantage of the exchange data link, the pSeries computer must be connected directly to the switch (as shown in Figure 1). The physical link is an EIA RS232C (V.24) serial connection:

If your switch does not use SMSI, SMDI, VMS, or ACL, you can use CallPath Server to get called and calling number information, and to support call transfer and message waiting. Alternatively, if your switch has a host access control link, you can write your own signaling process to interface with it, to provide functions such as call transfer, message waiting, and call monitoring (see How voice applications access other resources).