IP interoperability continues slow march

Worldwide Internet protocol carrier IDT said last week that its Net2Phone voice-over-IP product is completely interoperable with InterXpress gateways, the IP voice and data suite from Siemens Information and Communications Networks.

"This was our first test of interoperability with Siemens," said David Greenblatt, IDT's chief operating officer. "We ascertained that we can pass traffic between Net2Phone and Siemens gateways. We can route, rate and settle traffic and monitor their gateways-basically, do everything you need to do to run a network."

The test, performed at IDT's labs, sent traffic between the IDT network and switches of the InterXpress 2000 series. That platform employs a 3Com hub to provide voice, fax and data connectivity among IP networks, or between IP networks and the public network.

"We recognize the need to give our customers a choice and to avoid locking them into proprietary solutions," said a Siemens spokesman.

To date, IDT has built most of its own IP gateways-though it does not sell them to other IP carriers-and has done interoperability testing with a few manufacturers' switches. "Interoperability is a time-consuming challenge," Greenblatt said. " It's something you want to do with the vendors that are going to bring you the minutes. "

These Siemens interoperability results may lead IDT to buy gateways from the vendor at some later date, but that decision has not been made, Greenblatt said. For now it's enough to know that Net2Phone works well over the InterXpress product suite. "We got one thing done, we did it well and it's looking great," he said. "But this certainly may lead to future cooperation with them."