The switch is on

After more than a year of boasting that the softswitch would carry the traffic of the next generation network, switch developers are seeing their tools get some action. Although carriers aren’t fully exploiting softswitches’ capabilities, they are slowly displacing Class 4 switches in some network scenarios.

Scalability, footprint and lower costs are the main reasons that carriers opt for the softswitch. As these providers build out their networks in new markets, the softswitch’s reduced cost and space requirements are much more appealing than the traditional providers’ bulky Class 4 switches.

Early examples of how the switches are being used include WorldQuest’s voice-over-IP (VoIP) service for international calling cards, Ntegrity’s voice-over-DSL (VoDSL) offering in multidwelling units (MDUs), Global Crossing’s carrier termination service, and Focal Communications’ Internet traffic termination.

WorldQuest: International quest

For the past four years, WorldQuest has been building a global network to serve its prepaid calling card customers. The VoIP network spans seven countries and serves about 132,000 customers each month. The majority of these customers call India from the U.S.

WorldQuest has been adding Internet gateways and switches in its target markets at a steady pace. For the past three years, it has used Nuera’s F200ip and F200SIP gateways.

Satisfied with the VoIP gateway, WorldQuest began beta testing Nuera’s ORCA GX-21, a gateway and SSC softswitch, to minimize costs in its growing network.

For its initial trials, WorldQuest had Orca GX-21s installed in its Dallas and Mexico City operations centers and began testing them with a couple T-1s. "Once it was stable, we went with full E-1s using the softswitch and GX-21 as our hub," says Jay Richardson, director of switch services for WorldQuest.

In the Dallas network center, WorldQuest interconnects the F200s and ORCA GX-21s for its two E-1s to Mexico City. The ORCA SSC controls the gateway, and the F200ips sit at the network edge. Richardson plans to add more F200s in other target regions. Two T-1 lines will be going to the Philippines, and one T-1 will be added to Sri Lanka. In New York, WorldQuest will add Nuera’s smaller gateway, ORCA GX-8, during the next few months.

"Since WorldQuest is using the Internet to carry the traffic, it’s important to have lost packet recovery and post dial delay," says Neil Salisbury, vice president of marketing for Nuera. "As WorldQuest’s network expanded, softswitch options came into play. Point-to-point applications would have worked fine, but with multiple points and hubs, it makes sense to have the softswitch controlling the traffic."

The two switches in Dallas and Mexico City have been in use for almost a year, and traffic slowly is increasing. About 8.4 million minutes traveled across the switches last November.

"The service is just beginning to take off in that area," Richardson says. "We are continuing to add T-1 lines and will slowly move traffic on to the softswitches."

With its transition to softswitches underway, WorldQuest’s next endeavor is to increase its service offerings to its growing customer base. "With softswitches replacing tandems, the next logical step is to replace Class 5 switches," says Richardson. "We’re looking at ways to use the switches to offer a unified messaging service. We must create these types of added-value services to stay in business, and the softswitch will facilitate these offerings. It is one of the fastest developing technologies out there."

Global Crossing: Switch to packets

More often than not, acquisitions bring network development plans to a screeching halt. But this truism proved false for Global Crossing’s takeover of Frontier Communications—at least for its IP network plans. Although the players and the targets have changed, the VoIP project is still on track to reach its initial goals.

In July 1999, Frontier announced that it was building an IP network that would carry all its voice traffic by 2002. With gateways and softswitches from Lucent Technologies and Sonus Networks, Frontier designed a national network that would include 15 to 20 cities by the middle of 2000.

Now almost 18 months later, Lucent has fallen out of the picture, and Global Crossing has shifted the network from its national scope to international.

With its first phase scheduled to be complete during summer 2001, Global Crossing’s VoIP network will span seven European cities and 15 markets. The network is projected to handle 2 billion to 3 billion minutes of traffic per month within its first six months of operation.

Now in an early development stage, the network is running limited live traffic over its six Sonus PSX6000 SoftSwitches and 15 Sonus GSX9000 Open Services Switches. The softswitches are distributed as mated pairs by region. In the West, one softswitch is located in Anaheim, Calif., and mated with a softswitch in Denver. In the central region, a softswitch in Kansas City, Kan., is mated with a softswitch in Chicago. And in the eastern region, a softswitch in Newark, N.J., is mated with a softswitch in Atlanta. Two more mated softswitches are in London, and seven physical gateways are distributed in European cities.

Before taking live traffic, the switches were tested in Global Crossing’s network lab, DevNet.

"We have done tests on the E-1 cards, system integration, network validation and operational readiness," says John Chapman, senior director of VoIP Services for Global Crossing. "We have also tested the features, global routing plans, interfaces and signaling variances. Most of 2000 was spent making sure the infrastructure was ready."

For now, Global Crossing is using the softswitches and signaling gateways to replace its Nortel Networks and Alcatel Class 4 switches.

"Our initial solution was to make the trunking application work," says Gary Rogers, vice president of sales and marketing for Sonus. "Next we will be adding support for an Internet access device for access support for SIP and H.323."

Once Global Crossing is satisfied with the switches, Chapman expects to layer additional services onto the network. "We’re using the switches for carrier termination services so we can be sure of their quality, performance, reliability and scalability. Next, we will add retail services in Europe, Asia and Central America," Chapman says. "By the middle of 2001, we want to offer simple VPN services and voice options that allow ISPs to get into the voice business."

Focal’s first phase: traffic termination

After three years of evaluation, Focal made the softswitch plunge and added Convergent Networks’ ICS2000 into its network. Still not willing to trust the switch with voice traffic, Focal uses it to route Internet traffic off its voice network and Class 5 switches.

"We wanted to make the project as manageable as possible," says John Barnicle, chief operating officer of Focal. "We elected to use the switch to handle terminating traffic so that we could get familiar with the boxes and how they acted on the network."

Before opting for a softswitch, Focal considered using remote access servers that would strip off the Internet dial-up calls. But Barnicle ditched that idea for the more full-featured softswitches.

Convergent’s switch was not Focal’s first choice, however. Before choosing Convergent, Focal spent 18 months doing development work with Castle Networks (now Unisphere Networks). When Castle was unable to provide Focal’s requested features, Barnicle turned to Convergent, which was developing its second generation switch.

"We have been a provider for four years, and we didn’t want to take chances with any devices on our network," Barnicle says. "We didn’t want the first product that rolled off the assembly line. We wanted documentation and a staff that would help with training and support."

Focal has been using the ICS2000 for three months in Chicago but at low traffic thresholds. Because traffic is limited, Focal opted to embed Convergent’s ICSG signaling gateway and the ICSX softswitch for call control into the ICS2000 broadband switch.

"Embedding softswitch and signaling gateway gives Focal cost and footprint advantages," says Sally Bament, vice president of marketing for Convergent. "To support 100,000 subscribers with Nortel DMS switches would require a huge amount of space. We offered them the same support in a 24-inch-by-24-inch footprint."

Because Focal is making minimal demands on the switch, the embedded softswitch and signaling gateway have space and cost advantages. But as traffic requirements increase, Focal may need to decouple the products. At some point, Barnicle expects to move 30 million minutes of traffic per day over the network. A portion of this traffic will be VoDSL service, which is scheduled for testing over the Convergent switches in early 2001.

During the next 12 months, Barnicle expects to deploy six more switches into Focal’s more mature markets.

"We’ve learned that the ICS2000 can’t do everything that a DMS 500 does, but it works out better for us," Barnicle says. "It does fewer things, but that simplicity means the time required to understand and operate the box is significantly reduced. Not being robust is almost an advantage."

Ntegrity unbolts DSL door at Detroit MDU

While other service providers place VoDSL at the end of their 2001 road map, Ntegrity already is offering voice and data services over DSL to its multiple dwelling unit customers in underserved regions.

In Detroit, Ntegrity has contracts for almost 50,000 apartment units in middle market residential communities. These buildings typically consist of 50 apartments, and their occupants average annual incomes of $38,000.

To serve these customers, Ntegrity is using softswitch technology to help lower its operational costs. Each month, customers post about 15,500 local minutes and approximately 5000 long-distance minutes—at rates 10% to 20% lower than Ntegrity’s competitors’ prices.

Within the apartment building, CopperCom’s CSX 2100 switch connects Ntegrity’s T-1 line to the public network, replacing the traditional tandem switches. "We chose CopperCom because it fit into our deployment plans. We could start small with 100 ports and work up to 16,000 ports. Other solutions didn’t deliver the necessary economies," says Blake Ratcliff, vice president of networks engineering for Ntegrity. "Lucent was offering a repackaged Class 5 switch with a lower price point, but it required more initial customers. We wanted a smaller box with a proven solution."

Ntegrity is using a combination of the CopperCom’ Gateway, the CSX 2100 switch and CopperController, a feature creation environment. "We bring together broadband access with softswitch technology to provide an integrated solution for the local exchange," says Jennifer Stagnaro, chief marketing officer for CopperCom.

The CSX 2100 and CopperController use technology CopperCom gained when it acquired DTI last March. Integrating CopperCom’s original gateway product, which packetizes voice for Internet access devices, gives the company a VoDSL edge. Other softswitch companies plan to offer similarly combined products, but CopperCom’s early integration efforts have led to a sizable customer base.

To meet these customers’ demands, CopperCom plans to add Class 5 features in early 2001.

Ntegrity expects to use the Class 5 features, but the company was more concerned with CopperCom’s Class 4 functions. "It doesn’t have a lot of end-user features, but we don’t need them. Our customers want simple features like three-way calling, caller ID block and call waiting," Ratcliff says.

Although advanced features will be an added service for his customers, Ratcliff was more concerned with the switch’s call processing capabilities. CopperCom’s software approach, he says, enables a much higher transaction rate than other switches he reviewed.

"Rather than creating software that is intertwined with the hardware, CopperCom created software that would push or pull data from machines and could be separated," Ratcliff says. "If you don’t compile the software, it’s difficult to get to the necessary transaction speeds for instantaneous call processing capability. No amount of processor speed can solve that problem."

Moving the softswitch forward

These profiles of early softswitch adopters prove some initial predictions from analysts. The well-funded, greenfield competitive local exchange carriers are the primary customers, and the first applications are small in scope. During the next phase in the softswitch evolution, the carriers expect to have more full-featured applications that put significantly more stress on the devices.

Before these applications are available, though, the softswitch providers need to fine-tune their products. Better integration with back-end systems and standard development are top priorities.

Difficulty integrating with the operations support system (OSS) was an early complaint from softswitch customers. The switch providers had spent all their development efforts on reliability and scalability requirements, but provisioning customers, managing the devices and billing system integration was put on the back burner. Now the providers are attempting to build more full-featured devices.

"We are proving that the switches are reliable and scalable. The next step is to ensure that the tools interface with billing and provisioning systems," Rogers says. "Our next development emphasis will be element management. We plan to deliver a strong, robust OSS solution."

Each carrier has chosen a different method for managing the softswitches. WorldQuest is using NueraView. Global Crossing chose Sonus’ element management system, Insight, to keep an eye on its switches. At Focal, the team integrated the Convergent switch with Micromuse’s NetCool. Ntegrity is using management tools included in the softswitches.

For billing, the carriers are looking for call detail records (CDRs) in standard Automatic Message Accounting format for their back-end systems. Some of the switches are sending the data directly to the billing systems, and others are passing it through a mediation layer for conversion.

WorldQuest is passing the softswitch CDRs directly into its billing system.

Global Crossing created a service identifier for its CDRs. "Since the softswitch is an open system, we were able to create the CDR format, which we drop into the mediation layer," says Global Crossing’s Chapman. "It was less of an issue than we thought it would be because we had people on staff who knew how to build the translation."

Focal has an off-the-shelf billing mediation platform that takes the records from the Convergent softswitch and converts them for the billing system. Ntegrity is taking CDRs directly from the CopperCom switch and passing them to the billing system.

The lack of standards for softswitches is another challenge for carriers and providers. Although applications such as packet peering or switch peering are being considered, they are impossible because of the difficulty the softswitches from different manufacturers have interacting with one another.

"From Sonus-to-Sonus switches we can preserve the services, but there are difficulties when other softswitches are involved," Rogers says. "Sometimes traffic and back-office information transactions break down. The standards still need to be worked out."

Even with the large amount of work ahead of them, the providers see a rosy future for softswitches. "We all have been guilty of hyping the vision of our technology," says Convergent’s Bament. "But providers have bought in to our vision, and we’re on the cusp of a market that is taking off."

Before that market erupts, analysts expect that the softswitch market will see more change. Already Unisphere has purchased Castle Networks, CopperCom has bought DTI and Sonus has acquired TTI.

"Growth and expansion will continue," says Rob Norcross, vice president of Mercer Management. "The market has too many entrants right now, and most will be bought or merged. It’s highly unlikely that these equipment makers will be in their current form a few years from now." n

Hanna Hurley is a freelance writer based in Alameda, Calif. Her e-mail address is hrhurley@hotmail.com.