Abstract: A loop responder enables a telephone technician to use a test device to automatically and accurately validate the performance of a telephone subscriber loop from the originating equipment to the subscriber demarcation point without any human assistance at the central office. The directory number for the subscriber loop under test is automatically identified and stored without any human intervention such that a No Test Trunk can be automatically used and test results can be automatically associated with the respective line record information. Data is collected and then transmitted in suitable manner and stored in non-volatile memory for collection by and/or transmission to a central host processing system. Particular aspects of the aforementioned collection and storage processes relate to the transmission of the data packets via several input/output (I/O) ports. Either modem or DTMF communication can occur over the same pair of tip and ring wires.

Abstract: A telephone technician's remote assist apparatus connects into a telephone line to be tested by the technician from a remote location. Control signals are sent from the remote location to the remote assist apparatus over the same pair of wires of the telephone line under test. A particular control signal encoding includes two consecutive leading star (**) dual-tone multi-frequency tones. The remote assist apparatus opens the telephone line in response to at least one control signal, and the apparatus preferably automatically restores the line after a predetermined time so that the subscriber is not left disconnected. The particular control signal encoding and the automatic restoring features can be implemented without using the same pair of wires under test.