$(&#^% means hello: IP encryption, QOS provide difference among carriers

While much attention in the Internet protocol voice market will be focused on international arbitrage opportunities over the next two to three years, carriers wanting to differentiate their services already are starting to see the enabling technologies hit the market.

At last month's ISPCon, two that could play a big part-encryption and quality of service (QOS)-started getting some attention. Although separate technologies handled through different techniques, both are expected to play a key role in the development of IP voice services as carriers begin developing new applications.

Ironically, carriers' use of service level agreements (SLAs) for data services may become one of the biggest drivers for QOS on the voice side of the market. Indeed, a few models of QOS are emerging that take SLAs a step further. IPHighway, for example, will announce this week a series of products for carriers and end users that changes SLAs from punitive models where customers are credited for missed service to ones that proactively guarantee bandwidth. For carriers, the ThruQoS line allows them to move away from deploying more capacity as a solution to network congestion.

"It's amazing to me as a business person the way over-provisioning is accepted today," said Charles Federman, chairman and CEO of IPHighway.

IPHighway also will unveil its Open Policy System, geared toward carriers. Under the company's model, data is given priority based on policy servers, which are set up by network managers. A transmission's level of QOS also is carried throughout the entire link, not just on a specific segment. Behind the entire system is common open policy service protocol, which recently finished a second round of interoperability testing at Intel's Architecture Lab.

For Internet service providers and carriers, moving to a proactive environment also creates a new economic model where value-based pricing comes into play, said Federman. "The quality requests are going to become a commodity, and at that point, the policy server is going to be the differentiation."

Aiming at the enhanced IP market also is the goal of RPK Ltd., which is developing its security software with some voice applications in mind. Using its Encryptonite software toolkit, the San Francisco-based company is close to completing its first chipset, which could be embedded in gateways or any end device on an IP network. In the voice environment, that could lend itself to Internet telephony service providers selling secured voice transmission as a premium service.

Before that happens, the issue of added latency must be addressed. However, by using a combination of proprietary software and public key encryption, RPK claims it doesn't add enough latency for users to notice.

"There is some latency in the initialization," said Jack Oswald, president and CEO of RPK. "The actual encryption of the data is a fairly lightweight process, though, and we can keep up with the rate at which transmissions happen."

Though originally designed for streaming media such as audio over the Internet, Oswald said some promising applications could be in voice and fax transmissions.

KENAN GOES LONG WITH U S WEST U S West will deploy Kenan Systems Corp.'s Strategis decision support software in its long-distance operations. The package integrates data from multiple sources and helps carriers target markets for specific services. U S West initially will use the software for customer acquisition.

IP GETS INTELLIGENT Informix Corp. and Vsys are teaming up to create IP voice products that use intelligent network capabilities. Combining Informix's database solutions with Vsys' Vswitch line of networking gear, the companies aim to introduce applications such as local number portability and virtual private networking into the IP voice market.

BANI PICKS WAN MANAGER

Bell Atlantic Network Integration has selected Visual Networks to provide the management features of its new WAN service. Using the Visual Uptime system, each end point on a user's WAN will be terminated by an analysis service element, which provides intelligent management functions to the customer premises.