GETTING SMART ABOUT INTELLIGENT NETWORKS

Signaling enables the services that make service providers money. But if the money comes in the services door and goes right back out through the door left open by lax security or continual capital upgrades, something has to change. That has created an opportunity for intelligent network vendors.

Tekelec is addressing mounting security concerns with its Sentinel product, which now detects network attacks and provides intelligence reporting to law enforcement agencies.

Tekelec argues that carriers can improve efficiency by taking advantage of the data collections capabilities in its various signaling solutions. “We know from past experience that the cost of large-scale outages is enormous,” said Travis Russell, manager of global sales for Tekelec's Sentinel product line. “Carriers have no real defense mechanism against denial of service attacks. The only mechanism is early detection.”

More cost-cutting efficiency can be found in Tekelec's new TekWare high-capacity architecture for signaling and integrated services applications. The company's first product based on this architecture is TekServer, a Linux-based services platform that can be stand-alone or integrated with the Eagle 5 Signaling Application System to enable IN and IP applications that require high-transaction speeds.

Signaling systems provider Performance Technologies answered with its own new architecture by introducing the SEGway IP-STP. The modular architecture of this signal transfer point (STP) replacement is built around a CompactPCI Packet Switching Backplane, which for an STP is a very compact footprint. It can be used to offload existing STPs or bypass them and connect to home location directories and SMS servers directly over an IP network.

“When you think of [traditional] access markets, you're looking at some big honking STPs that are multimillion-dollar devices,” said Robert Mason, director of marketing at Performance Technologies. “We are looking at something more in tune with the IP infrastructure.”

So is Aravox. Presenting at the Telecom Investor Forum, this young company introduced its real-time IP Services Gateway. “In order to support real applications over IP, the network will have to evolve,” said Bill Rich, president and CEO of Aravox. “Today, if a carrier wants to peer for VoIP, they have some really ugly solutions to get it done.”

Aravox' solution provides QoS by means of session bandwidth control, concurrent call control, call admission control and traffic differentiation for IP services. “This is not a technology in search of a marketplace,” Rich said. Both enterprises and Tier 1 carriers can use the company's IP Service Gateway. Aravox already has installations with Level 3, NTT and Williams Communications.

Of the two carrier requirements for parting with cash — opex savings and revenue generation — most solutions described here focused on the former. Perhaps that was because cutting operational costs is easier to do than creating new services.