Netrake adds Z-Tel as customer, lays out CALEA vision

CHICAGO—Netrake announced last week at Supercomm that it has been chosen by Tampa, Fla.-based Z-TEL Communications to provide session control support for its nationwide rollout of voice-over-IP services. Netrake also talked about its vision for CALEA support as well as new partnerships with SS8 and Sipura.

For Z-TEL, Netrake will support VoIP peering as well as enterprise and residential VoIP customers from the same platform called nCite. Netrake’s nCite and nCite SE solutions control the signaling and media streams coming into the carrier’s network. Among other functions, it provides peering between networks, a VoIP firewall, Network Address Translation and security. They can identify malicious RTP packet streams and prioritize traffic flow.

“Z-Tel originally announced [competitor] Acme Packet in January, but we replaced it and that says something for us,” said Micaela Giuhat, assistant vice president of product management for Netrake.

Netrake also explained how it is using its session border control platform to solve the lawful intercept compliance problems inherent to VoIP. Netrake argues that the session controller is the place to provide the access function for CALEA because in addition to providing access to the data stream, the session controller is able to use real-time processing to duplicate the information flow without detection by the end user’s equipment.

“For people in the voice-over-IP space, CALEA can be very confusing,” Giuhat said.

The nCite Session Controllers provide a secure administrative interface that receives warrant information from the service provider and works with all current network elements. Netrake formed a partnership with SS8 to deliver the administrative function while it concentrates on the access portion.

“The best way to deal with CALEA is to replicate the signaling and media. And the session border controller is the best place to provide that replication,” Giuhat said.

SS8 has a suite of security services related to lawful intercept. And both Netrake and SS8 comply with PacketCable Electronic Surveillance Specifications.

Netrake now has multimedia, multi-network support and said it complies with 3GPP standards, including SIP-specific changes and now supports dialing plans and dialing plan management.

Another partnership was announced with Sipura Technology. It is the first session control/ VoIP [analog terminal adapter] partnership. Through the partnership, Netrake will allow carriers to test end-user equipment remotely as well as to monitor and enforce service level agreements. The companies will co-develop features for monitoring, provisioning and troubleshooting the broadband access connection.