Sometimes there is nothing like a telephone lines mans test set to hear exactly what is going on! VoIP solutions have a double challenge: First it is hard to put a butt set on an IP connection; and secondly what happens when that connection hits a gateway at a remote site? This is always a fun situation. ShoreTel has a “trunk test tool” that has some usability. You can actually bring up the test tool, and right click a particular telephone line and place a call. If you are really in the fast reader group, you can set the test tool options to point the call at your own remote handset. In this way, you are sitting in NY, dialing out on a SF analog telephone line. ShoreTel has another debug tool that is very useful for “hearing” what is happening on a remote analog telephone line at a site that you just cant get a handle on. You can literally telnet into the switch and setup up a recording session and capture the analog line sounds to a file back at your location. This will enable you to listen to the error message or lack of dial tone, locally enabling you to make the right decision about how to handle the trouble ticket. The audio output of the analog trunk port is saved on the HQ or DVM server that controls the switch. To do this, follow this procedure: From the start menu, navigate to the Control Panel> Administrative Tools and locate the IIS Manager; Right-click on the IIS manager and select Properties. Then enable the ability to write to the FTP server by selecting the Write checkbox and clicking OK. This enable the ability to write to: C:\Inetpub\ftproot At the command prompt, run the following VXWorks commands: Record2File2 (1, 60, “test” ) Audio data from running this command is stored in the file test_rx.pcm and file test_tx.pcm in the C:\Inetpub\ftp which will be stored as 8000Hz 16bit, Mono and can be listed to using a standard audio application. Give this a shot the next time you are trying to “hear” if an analog line out at some remote location has any dial tone!