Abstract: A system and method are disclosed for providing redundancy for telecommunication switches. A primary telecom switch has an active processing board and a passive I/O board for communicating with external sources, such as a control network and bearer traffic network. A redundant secondary telecom switch has an active processing board and a passive I/O board for communicating with a control network, and is connected to the I/O board of the primary switch through a redundancy connection for communicating with the bearer traffic network. According to the invention, the secondary telecom switch assumes the role of the primary telecom switch in the event that the primary processing board becomes unavailable. The secondary telecom switch then communicates with the bearer traffic network as the master switch through the redundancy connection and the I/O board of the primary switch, thus avoiding the necessity for reconnections and reconfiguration.

Abstract: A system and method are disclosed for the licensing and managing media resources in a converged services platform. A novel central pool of resource points representing a licensed level of media resource capability is created, the central pool for the storage of all default and any additional licensed resource points represented by the converged services platform, where portions of the central pool are dynamically allocated to one or more media resource cards.

Abstract: A media resources card for use with a converged services platform. The media resources card, which includes one or more arrays of digital signal processors (DSPs), s operable to perform a variety of communication services including recording and playback of voice recorded announcements. A caching arrangement is provided in which a given recording (file) may have either a persistence level or timer expiration attribute or both.

Abstract: The switch has a passive section and an active section or tray that may be docked to the passive section. The passive section contains only the physical interfaces to the switch's external data and telephony networks and power input. It is not intended to be a field replaceable unit and is therefore intended to be mounted in a rack system with all of the power and communications cables attached thereto. The telephony and data ports are routed from the passive section to the active section via connectors on the two sections as well as to a redundancy connector on the passive section that may be physically connected by a cable to a slave unit in a redundant application. The active section or tray contains all of the active components of the switch and is inserted via guides into the passive section. The tray is considered a field replaceable unit and can be inserted into and extracted from the passive section while the system is powered up and operational.

Abstract: A device for reading data encoded on a form has a removable scanning wand and a housing defining a slot for receiving the form. The wand functions as the input means of a slot reader when received in the housing, and is useful independently of the housing as a hand held scanning wand. The slot of the housing receives the form so as to position data on the form at a predetermined position and the wand is directed at the predetermined position when received in the housing. The wand, or other similar data read head for bar code, magnetic strips, OCR characters or the like, is preferably positively positioned in the housing by a spring biased clip releasable by finger pressure. The wand can be coupled by a connecting lead to a further terminal apart from the housing, to which terminal the housing can preferably be attached to add a slot reader capability.