Kagoor launches ‘voice-aware’ traffic engineering

(Telephony) Citing the need to prioritize voice packets across IP networks, Kagoor Networks today launched a voice-service traffic management technology suite to “deal with the shortcomings of MPLS (MultiProtocol Label Switching),” a company executive said.

Called VoiceFlow, the Kagoor technology “fills in the gaps, including the real voice-flow application based on the signaling of the voice streams,” said Opher Kahane, Kagoor’s president/CEO.

This traffic engineering includes looking ahead in the network to determine the best route and dynamic re-routing of traffic to avoid congestion.

“The bottom line is it really complements MPLS on one hand but can actually be deployed now in any kind of network, with or without MPLS, as an underlying technology--even over the public Internet,” Kahane said.

Kagoor’s technology is based on the argument that IP transport technology is too generic to effectively deal with the latency and quality of service problems inherent in voice traffic.

“Kagoor is focusing on adding voice-over-IP awareness to the packet, leveling the network itself in a totally complementary role to existing IP infrastructure elements, such as routers and switches,” Kahane said. “It’s a new category of technology we’re premiering here.”

Kagoor’s technology will sit at the edge of the point of presence (POP), where it would examine traffic and manipulate it based on its voice characteristics.

“We are voice-aware in the full sense of the word, unlike many basic routing solutions that only work based on IP ports and IP addresses,” Kahane said.

No standards have been set for MPLS or for the voice-traffic engineering Kagoor is suggesting, but Kahane said this is not a drawback to full product deployment.

“We’re pioneering a new market segment … of how to do voice-over-IP traffic engineering,” he said. “We’ll obviously open that up and make it [the] standard protocol.”

Standards aside, Kahane emphasized Kagoor is “running on top of the IP network, so we’re actually encapsulated with all the standard protocols. This allows us to work even today on top of the public Internet and on top of non-MPLS networks. It’s dealing with the urgent issues now and gradually building towards a homogeneous solution in the future.”

Kagoor is participating in seven trials worldwide. Kahane expects Kagoor’s first customers to provide traffic engineering on top of the public Internet to control voice flows “and get Tier 1 voice or peak quality on the public Internet,” he said.