3com Corporation

Steve Weeks

Michael Sean McCormack

Paul Francis Dryer

A card, particularly a digital line card is provided for use with a chassis having a slot for receiving the digital line card. The chassis has an Ethernet bus for receiving packets from the line card and has a power supply and power strip for supplying power to the line card. The line card includes a public switched telephone network (PSTN) digital line input/output interface for sending digital signals over the PSTN and for receiving digital signals from PSTN. A line card control processor is connected to the digital line input/output interface. An Ethernet input/output is provided for sending packets over a local network corresponding to signals received from the telephone line and for receiving packets from the local network and forwarding received signals to the digital line input/output interface. The Ethernet input/output has a controllable backplane interface to the Ethernet bus including a switch normally active to direct data flow between the line card and the Ethernet bus, an Ethernet transceiver connectable to an Ethernet network, and an Ethernet link signal detector for detecting an Ethernet link signal at the Ethernet transceiver and deactivating the switch to isolate the line card from the Ethernet bus and to force data flow through the Ethernet transceiver. The card may also be part a network system with a chassis having a backplane Ethernet bus.

System for isolating ethernet network traffic

A telephone set of a telephone system is provided with an infrared interface. This infrared interface is able to communicate with an infrared port on a local computer. The computer is configured to send data to the infrared port, and receive data from the infrared port, in the same manner as if the computer was sending and receiving data over a telephone system. The telephone circuitry in the telephone system receives the infrared data and converts the infrared data into a format for transmitting across the telephone system.

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North Andover, MA, United States of America

Steve Weeks