Interoperability comes to the Internet

Streamlining Internet infrastructure and facilitating the delivery of enhanced services are key concerns of Internet service providers, judging by products on display at Supercomm '98.

In chasing new markets such as virtual private networks (VPNs) and Internet telephony, ISPs are realizing that interoperability with other providers will be critical and are seeking standards-based solutions.

For traditional carriers, using the Internet as a vehicle for delivering other services continues to gain momentum.

In the wake of AT&T's nationwide frame relay outage earlier this year, ISPs have seen increased interest in using the Internet as a backup facility for data networks, said Amy L. Copley, senior product manager of WAN protocols for Bay Networks. The ability to support secured transactions through VPNs will be essential in making customers comfortable with putting enterprise data onto the Internet.

At Supercomm, Bay announced that it is shipping networking equipment that supports Layer 2 tunneling protocol (L2TP), a standards-based protocol that will enable VPNs even when the equipment at each end of the connection is from a different vendor. Bay products supporting L2TP include the Versalar access switch, the BayRS 12.10 backbone node and the Contivity Extranet Switch.

Bay also announced other enhancements to its Versalar remote access concentrator, including support for multicasting using Internet group management protocol and support for Radius, the authentication method U.S. Robotics traditionally uses. Radius support can help provide a smooth transition for users migrating from a U.S. Robotics environment, said Karen Livoli, VPN marketing manager for Bay.

Another new Versalar feature is the ability to authenticate remote users via a callback method. All inbound calls are rejected, but if the caller's number is on an approved list, the Versalar returns the call. An added benefit of this method is that service providers only need to order dial-out trunks from the incumbent carrier.

Cisco Systems used Supercomm '98 to launch its new Service Management System, aimed at helping ISPs quickly provision enhanced services such as VPNs, Internet telephony and managed router and commerce services.

ISPs must now perform four tasks to set up a new service, said David L. Jones, director of Cisco's marketing network and service management business unit. A different group within the service provider handles each step-provisioning, planning and administration, operations and assurance, and accounting and billing-and a combination of home-grown and off-the-shelf software is often used, Jones said.

The goal of the Service Management System is to automate the flow of information between departments using a common foundation. ISPs buy modules as needed to support planned services. The system also can be integrated with many existing software packages and, via open interfaces, with software from third-party developers.

Making it easier for ISPs to deliver enhanced services is also the focus of the Solaris for ISP server software from Sun Microsystems, introduced at Supercomm. The product, which uses Sun's Java software to quickly provision and manage new services, will enable ISPs to host corporate e-mail on their networks, said Paul Tempest-Mitchell, Sun's manager of systems engineering.

"Where we see this spreading eventually is the ability to host enterprise financials on the [service provider] network," said Tempest-Mitchell, citing the example of Oracle and SAP database information. "The problem with SAP is that you can't find the staff to do it."

But a service provider could provide such a staff, he said, adding, "a 200-person company honestly can't afford an information technology department."

The ISP consulting unit that Compaq Computer Corp. acquired with its purchase last month of Digital Equipment Corp. also has seen a trend toward corporations handing off traditional in-house functions to their Internet providers, said Dave Cedrone of ISP Strategic Relations for the merged company.

"We hear from our ISPs that a lot of their consulting work is Web-enabling legacy applications," said Cedrone.

Another hot area is integrated messaging, Cedrone said, adding that companies want to outsource messaging management to their service provider, but they want to own their own domain name.

At Supercomm, Digital announced that it would act as a systems integrator for VocalTec's Internet protocol (IP) telephony products and would provide worldwide around-the-clock services for customers wishing to implement IP telephony offerings based on VocalTec's equipment.

Increasingly, the Internet also is becoming a customer interface mechanism for traditional carriers wanting to offer enhanced services. For example, Microsoft lets a telco's customers provision their own toll-free number and call forwarding services through a Web interface. The interface is based on Microsoft's Telecom Dashboard product and on SS7 development work provided by DGM&S, said Jonathan D. Usher, Microsoft's telecom marketing manager.

At the core As the Internet continues its exponential growth, traffic concerns remain at the forefront. Several Supercomm exhibitors focused on creative solutions to Internet congestion.

Inktomi Corp.'s approach is caching-using clustered computer systems to store the most commonly accessed Web sites at multiple points throughout a service provider's network, thereby reducing traffic levels by minimizing the distance data has to travel to reach Web surfers. "It's cheaper to store data than to transport it," said Dennis McEvoy, Inktomi's vice president of development and support.

Inktomi's software works by by retaining a copy of any new Web page a user requests that isn't already stored locally. Recently, the ISP unit of Norwegian telco Telenor conducted a test of Inktomi's caching software. Telenor found that after five weeks of operation, more than 50% of Web page requests could be supplied locally. This number is even more impressive when you consider that some Web pages are unsuitable for caching-such as those containing stock quotes, McEvoy noted.

Caching also has emerged as an alternative to mirroring for companies that host Web sites. Mirroring requires companies to store an entire Web site on multiple servers to support simultaneous access by larger numbers of users. But caching replicates only the most frequently accessed portions of those Web sites, minimizing the amount of data that must be stored.

Another initiative that could help support higher traffic levels-and higher-bandwidth applications-is Internet2. Now under development, this nationwide internetwork will connect educational and governmental institutions at high data rates and support multimedia services and multicasting.

Torrent Networking Technologies Corp. expects to supply its IP9000 gigabit switch router to several university consortiums that will be building shared points of presence, dubbed gigaPOPs, on the Internet2 network, said Gordon C. Saussy, Torrent's vice president of marketing. These users will be attracted by the product's ability to supporting multicasting quality of service (QOS), he said. Torrent already has announced gigaPOP contracts with California State and Cornell universities, said Saussy.

Another vendor participating in Internet2 is Newbridge Networks. At Supercomm, Newbridge announced that the New York State Education and Research Network would use Newbridge's asynchronous transfer mode switches for its portion of the high-speed internetwork. NYSERNet chose the product because it wanted to support features that rely on ATM's QOS capability, said David Gellerman, Newbridge's vice president of carrier marketing.

Voice on the Internet First-time Supercomm exhibitors included a flock of companies offering devices for delivering voice and fax services over the Internet. Several vendors announced enhanced gateways for connecting calls to and from the circuit-switched network to an IP-based network.

Lucent Technologies and VocalTec, two of the leading gateway suppliers, said they would support a common version of the H.323 standard, enabling calls originating on one company's gateway to terminate on the other's. Until now, IP telephony service providers often have operated dual networks to maximize their ability to connect to other providers, said Scott D. Wharton, VocalTec's senior market manager.

Vienna Systems and Advanced Computer Communications announced that they will develop a carrier-class IP telephony gateway. The product will join Vienna's existing line of IP gateways, which are used by Qwest, Rocky Mountain Internet, VIP Calling and other carriers. The carrier-class device initially will scale up to 1500 ports and eventually may be expanded, said Vienna's Marketing Director Louise E. Labuda. Other features include a T-1 or T-3 interface to the public network and a 2 GByte packet bus to help ensure low-latency packet transfers.

Coyote Technologies LLC introduced a carrier-class IP switch that uses load balancing to help meet the telecom industry's "four-nines" standard-meaning the network is available 99.99% of the time. A load balancing server routes traffic to any of several redundant gateways as needed. It also can be used to help relieve congestion if any single gateway becomes overcrowded.

"The load balancing server is a big time differentiating point," said Eddie Jones, Coyote's senior product manager.

Coyote's switch uses 8-to-1 compression and has 192 channels per box. Carriers can link up to 10 boxes in a single location, said Jones.

Nuera Communications is targeting international service providers with its Access Plus F2000D digital circuit multiplier, announced at Supercomm. The product supports voice over IP or frame relay networks and offers voice encoding rates from 4.8 to 32 kb/s. The device also includes echo cancellation.

In a typical deployment, service providers likely will use an F2000D in an international gateway and to connect the gateway to Nuera F200 devices throughout the country, said Nuera Vice President of Marketing Andy M. Voss. Introduced previously, the lower-cost F200 provides similar functionality to the F200D but without some of the features that would make it suitable for international use.

TransNexus is targeting IP telephony service providers that want to connect their gateways with its new settlement service.

Service providers can register with TransNexus by providing details about the price that they are willing to accept for terminating calls for other carriers or to pay for having calls terminated by other carriers.

Companies can specify different prices for different times of day and different QOS levels. TransNexus acts as a clearinghouse, setting up connections based on parameters specified by carriers at each end and automatically debiting and crediting their accounts as appropriate.

TransNexus joins a number of players that are beginning to offer IP telephony settlement services. For example, the Global Reach Internet Connection consortium offers a similar service for member ISPs using prices agreed upon by the group.

TransNexus' offering is unique because it is the only one that features real-time settlement and arbitraged payment methods, said TransNexus President and CEO Jim Dalton.

Web-enabled call centers are another development area for IP telephony.

NetSpeak highlighted Version 4.0 of what Executive Vice President Harvey Kaufman described as its "network-centric" software. By deploying NetSpeak's software in their networks, ISPs can offer Web-enabled call centers as a service to their customers, he said.

Another key feature is the ability to let a customer service representative send catalog pages to a customer over a live Internet connection that also supports voice communication. By reducing a call center's reliance on its toll-free number, NetSpeak's offering can reduce the call center's operation costs, Kaufman said.