Re: Comparison of THC-SCAN v2.0 with Sandstorm PhoneSweep 1.02

[jbailey () ASCEND COM AU (Josh Bailey)]

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On Tue, 29 Dec 1998, nimrood wrote:

> dollars to something like we use here at our office, which cost over
> $120,000US (our box has several T1 interface cards for massive scanning
> and speech recognition) Just from what I read in the comparison post,

[DISCLAIMER: naturally I'm not claiming to speak for Ascend in any regard
whatsoever]

In these days of large integrated access servers, it's suprising how so
many of these products recently discussed make a big deal of how they can
drive 3 or 4 modems at once.

I use a system I wrote internally here for testing - it drives Max
4000s/6000s/TNTs "in reverse" - virtualising a Max digital modem to a *nix
serial port. My test PC here "thinks" it has 120 serial ports - which can
all be individually driven with bog-standard chat, pppd, etc.

Really anyone with more than an ounce of systems programming experience, a
little C, and a little Perl, plus an access server or four can easily come
up with a system that can generate more phone traffic than your average
small town.

I really wonder how useful these "phone scanner" programs are when they
are so easy to "do it yourself." After all - they all have the same
essential limitations (a modem can't tell the difference between a voice
prompt or a human being by itself) - their only differences are their user
interface, data collection and export functions, and degree of automation.

I guess it comes down to whether you can pay for multiple E1/T1s or not.
:-)

- --
Josh Bailey

(mailto:josh () ascend com - Intranet: http://home.ascend.com.au/~jbailey)

Escalation Support, Asia-Pacific             Voice:        +61-3-9656-7000
Ascend Communications, Inc                   Fax:          +61-3-9656-7003
Level 38, ANZ Tower, 55 Collins St           Mobile:       +61-417-128-921
Melbourne, Australia                         PGP:    SEND FILE jbailey.asc

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it." -- W. A. Harlinson


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