Zhone launches new gateway

Zhone Technologies today launched a new packet digital loop carrier that includes support for both SIP and MGCP.

The MALC IP-AG acts as both a voice-over-IP access gateway and next-gen DLC, and is being positioned as an easy way for carriers to transition to a packet-based network.

"The big differentiator we’ve always pushed is that we don’t care how you want to role it out," said David Markowitz, vice president of marketing for Zhone. "If you want to roll it out as a TDM device, that’s fine."

Indeed, the gateway can be configured with a multitude of trunk and line side interfaces including DS1, OC-12/48, 10BaseT and gigabit Ethernet. In a POTS application, the gateway can provide dialtone and send packetized voice and signaling to an IP network. In serving areas with legacy switches, the gateways can handle TDM traffic with either GR-303 or V5.2 TDM trunks or over AAL2 ATM uplinks. At the other end of the service spectrum, the gateway can support IGMP v2 multicast switching for video.

The gateway grew out of Zhone’s 2002 acquisition of Vpacket, which had developed softwarethat Zhone is now using as the basis of the MALC IP-AG.

"We took the software and put it as part of the Zhone common code base," Markowitz said. "There’s nothing that prevents us from deploying it across the entire product portfolio."