Abstract: This invention relates to an intelligent peripheral (IP) for connecting to a telephone network and providing added capabilities to the network. More particularly the invention relates to programmable suppression of call answer supervision by an intelligent peripheral or a voice recognition unit in a telephone network. The method comprises the steps of: the peripheral device receiving a call setup message from a network switch when a call is being initiated. The IP, on receipt of the call setup signal, suppresses the normal answer signal output and instead outputs a progress signal to the network switch. For an ISDN network the progress signal is a Progress Indicator PI=08 signal.

Abstract: A system and method are provided which allows the monitoring of the allocation and use of buffers allocated from a buffer pool to processes executing within a data processing system. Conventionally, if an instance of a process crashes or loses a reference to a buffer, that buffer is rendered inaccessible by other processes. Eventually, the buffer pool will become exhausted. Errors in a communication system are difficult to attribute to a single cause and, in particular within a communication stack, often arise as a consequence of a series of events. Typically, prior art communication monitoring systems only keep track of the latest process to have had access to a buffer and do not allow an investigation into the past history of the possession or access to the buffers. Accordingly, the present invention provides a system and method for monitoring the history of the possession of or access to buffers within a communication system.