The unit must be connected to a dedicated serial port (either 9 or 25 pin) on your computer that is free of COM port and Interrupt (IRQ) conflicts. It is not required that the serial port reside on any particular COM number or IRQ value. This is important only to application software that you may be running in conjunction with the unit. The requirements for computer CPU speed, disk drive space, memory, and operating system are determined by the software application you are running.

The unit should be connected to the telephone lines coming into your building commonly known as the Central Office or “CO” lines. These lines are otherwise referred to as flat rate, local loop, or 1FB lines. The unit can also operate on analog Centrex™ lines. In order to operate the unit on trunk lines (otherwise known as “ground start” lines) you will have to contact CallerID.com to swap your unit for a current detection model. The unit will not work connected directly to digital Centrex™, T1, or ISDN lines. If you have an ISDN interface hardware that has analog telephone outputs. outbound monitoring is possible but only with a current detection unit. Also, with a current detection unit you can monitor outbound calls if the unit is placed on analog extensions from a telephone switch. See Table 1 for telephone line type compatibility.

In order to capture Caller ID, an analog Caller ID signal must be present on the phone line. This signal can be sent directly from the phone company or certain types of ISDN interface units can regenerate digital Caller ID data as analog Caller ID signals to its analog ports. Analog Caller ID will not pass through telephone switches to extension lines. Even Caller ID compatible telephone switches do not pass or regenerate analog Caller ID signals to extensions lines. Units will not operate if directly connected to digital phone lines.