WaveSmith announces niche

(Telephony) Start-up WaveSmith Networks, founded in March 2000, has announced that its focus will be on multiservice switching via its WaveForm architecture.

“We’re plumbing,” said Robert Dalias, WaveSmith president and CEO and a company co-founder. “We connect the access to the core to the service network.”

According to Dalias, much attention has been paid to advancing the technology in these segments connected by multiservice switching.

Multiservice switching itself, though, relies on legacy ATM switches supporting services provided via multiple transport modes, he said. These elements, which are two to three technology cycles old, are not designed to adjust to emerging technologies and services made possible by the optical core, he said.

WaveSmith, then, will offer multiservice switching elements that offer horizontal scalability for the addition of advanced services as well as traditional vertical scalability. Since the WaveForm architecture runs all software processes in separate memory regions, these functionalities can be added or modified without disrupting service.

In addition, said Dalias, whereas most data switching platforms use a management interface that requires a gateway to the carriers network operating system, the WaveForm architecture is able to interact directly with an operating system, eliminating the need for gateways.

According to Dalias, since multiservice switching is already budgeted into a network costs WaveSmith’s products can be eased into a network without requiring a huge initial commitment from a carrier. “This is a customer-driven product, not a technology driven product,” he said.

Beta testing on WaveSmith’s products will begin this summer with, among others, ComCast Communications, Verizon and Genuity. Products are expected to ship toward the end of the year.