It is going to be harder and harder to get analog phone lines.  Many of the large phone companies are pushing the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to allow them to stop providing analog services and in turn raising prices.

If you are considering a mailing equipment change, most vendors only offer a LAN connected postage meters or they charge extra to connect through an analog line.

Your postage meter needs to connect to the vendor to refill postage, download software, update postal rates and transfer data.

1. Time Savings/Increased Speed and Reliability

With the use of a digital connection, postage refills, rate changes, and other software updates will be updated much faster than through an analog line without the interruption of a fax or incoming analog call interrupting.

2. Mailing Vendor Cost Savings – Extra fees ranging from $100-400 per meter. 

3. Analog Line Savings – Many organizations are keeping analog lines for their postage meter and fax machine without other uses. In other words, their main phone system is digital and run through their network.  As fax machines are replaced by digital multi-functional devices, the mail machine may be the only thing used on the $300-600 per year analog line.

Forward this information to your IT Dept/Network Administrator.

Depending on your vendor, here are the relevant links you will need:

Francotyp Postalia

Neopost

Pitney Bowes

stamps.com

A firewall is a network security system that monitors and controls the incoming and outgoing network traffic based on predetermined rules set by the company.

A Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is a formatted text that is the address to a resource on the internet.  For example: https://www.postaladvocate.com is the Postal Advocate URL.

Internet Protocol (IP) Address is a unique string of numbers separated by periods that identifies each device to communicate over a network.

Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is a network protocol that enables a server to automatically assign an IP address to a computer from a defined range of numbers (i.e., a scope) configured for a given network.

A DHCP server is designed to eliminate the need to provide a static IP address, Subnet Mask and Default Gateway which are required to connect to a LAN connection.

A static IP address is a set of numbers assigned to a computer by an internet service provider (ISP) to be its permanent address on the Internet.

A subnet mask is a screen of numbers used for routing traffic within a subnet.

A default gateway is the access point that a device uses to send information to a computer in another network or the Internet.

A proxy server is a dedicated computer or a software system running on a computer that acts as the intermediary to access the mailing vendor’s servers through your internet connection.

A dynamic IP address is a temporary set of numbers assigned to a computer when it’s connected to a network.

If a device is given a static IP address, it does not change where dynamic IP addresses are assigned by the network when the device connects to the network and can change over time.

Domain Name System (DNS) are the website addresses we see and use every day. Computers don’t understand normal website addresses that we recognize.  Instead, they use IP addresses (see IP Address definition).  For example, our website address is www.postaladvocate.com.  A computer would not understand but it’s a lot easier to remember.  A computer would recognize our IP Address which is: http://210.212.229.234:82/postaladvocate_website/

Domain name system servers match domain names like google.com to their associated IP addresses

LAN stands for Local Area Network and is a computer network that interconnects computers and associated devices that share a common communications line or wireless link to a server.

A Universal Serial Bus (USB) cable connects a computer and a peripheral device.