Hypercom products aimed at larger audience

Hypercom Network Systems last week rolled out three new products to boost its line of branch network equipment.

The company, which specializes in developing large private networks for clients such as American Express, announced that it has increased the Internet protocol (IP) capability of its Integrated Enterprise Network switch routers, added video via frame relay to its switch/routers and introduced new switching capabilities aimed at promoting deployment of switched virtual circuits (SVCs).

While Hypercom believes frame relay and asynchronous transfer mode are the better protocols for high-bandwidth transport, the company wants to take advantage of an expected marked increase in IP traffic, said Hypercom President Paul Wallner.

"Some customers are building large, powerful IP backbones," Wallner said. "We don't feel [IP] is an immediate market; we feel it's a strategic direction."

The new video capability introduced last week centers on a videoconferencing module that plugs into any of Hypercom's IEN switch/routers.

The company hopes to become the sole vendor to customers who have used Hypercom's frame relay switch/routers for other tasks but relied on ISDN or another technology for video, Wallner said.

The new switching capabilities are designed to make voice over frame relay more cost-effective.

When a frame relay voice packet hits the PBX at the central location and gets decompressed and recompressed before being routed to its final destination, the quality is significantly diminished. Part of Hypercom's new package is Quick Switch, which allows such traffic to be moved along without the decompression/recompression cycle (see figure).

That feature is envisioned as an interim solution until telcos offer switched virtual circuits.