It's in the Software

Although the focus at Supercomm 2000 decidedly wasn't wireless, several vendors with wireless interests debuted software to help ease the network evolution to IP telephony.

Ericsson's voice-over-IP software allows providers to add IP services to their offerings. IPT II takes services and applications from the core transport technologies. This open platform inter-operates with multiple network types, making it easier for providers with diverse holdings to use the software across their existing networks.

"Since many operators have customers running a variety of different networks, they need a one-size-fits-all IP-telephony package," said Maria Khorsand, Ericsson director of the IPT product unit. Khorsand said that software switching lets the services live throughout the network and not inside a hardware switch.

IPT 2.1, scheduled for later this year, allows providers to run applications such as Ericsson's iPulse and unified messaging. They also will be abl e to customize features and add third-party products.

The mobile Internet was the focus of Lucent's key announcement of a portfolio of solutions made up of a wireless router, IP-server technology and a base-station platform. Noting that today's infrastructure isn't suited for Internet traffic, Lucent said that its router allows providers to gain the reliability and performance necessary for mobile access.

"Off-the-shelf, best-effort routers for the fixed-wired Internet were not designed for wireless access," said Bill Wiberg, Lucent cellular and PCS business president. "That's why our 3G solutions are fundamentally different from competitors who are basing their 3G networks on technology developed for the fixed Internet."

Lucent's router provides signaling and voice gateway functions for traffic from mobile devices. Associated with applications residing in the mobility server, the router directs voice and data packets to either the PSTN or the Internet. The mobility server is built on next-generation, carrier-grade Sun server technology. The OneBTS base station gives providers one hardware platform that can be provisioned with software to support any of the major IMT-2000 interfaces.

Meanwhile, 3Com added Total Control 2000 to its Commworks portfolio. An architecture that allows migration from circuit-switched networks to multiservice packet networks, Commworks is composed of three tiers: The first two provide universal connectivity with signaling-protocol mediation, and the third provides an open environment for application development and deployment.

Total Control 2000 supports a variety of access media, including narrowband data services, and is designed for areas of higher population density. It complements Total Control 1000, designed for smaller points of presence.

Trillium Digital System's software solution resides in the signaling layer. By providing IP telephony software, including H.323, media-gateway-control protocol (MGCP), MEGACO/H.248, SS7-over-IP, session-initiation protocol (SIP) and SIP best current practices for Internet telephony, Trillium provides solutions used in equipment such as soft switches, media gateways and signaling gateways. H.323 allows providers to establish voice and multimedia communications over packet-based networks. MGCP and MEGACO/H.248 are device-control protocols that let legacy networks work with IP-based infrastructures by separating the signaling and service capability, SS7-termination capabilities and the media-transmission capability. SS7-over-IP is a set of International Engineering Task Force (IETF) standards for transporting message-based PSTN traffic over IP-based networks. Likewise supported by IETF, SIP is a transport-independent, text-based protocol used in Internet conferencing and telephony.

Internet traffic puts a tremendous burden on the PSTN by tying up switch resources and interoffice trunks for extended periods. This drag increases the likelihood of call blocking and service-quality compromises. Also, because Internet calls typically use less than 20% of voice circuit's bandwidth, sending Internet-bound traffic over the PSTN is inefficient.

VIA-Internet Access is Inet's solution for helping providers relieve voice networks of resource-consuming Internet traffic. VIA-Internet Access redirects Internet modem calls from the voice networks to the data networks.

"Lengthy Internet calls are consuming bandwidth on networks designed to handle short-duration voice calls," said Elie Akilian, Inet president & CEO. "This congestion prevents calls from being completed, causes customer satisfaction to slip and requires unnecessary spending on voice-network infrastructure."

VIA allows the integration of switching and routing in a multivendor fashion to improve cost-to-performance ratios. By offloading Internet dial-up traffic from the circuit-switched network to data networks, providers can relieve their switches of long-duration calls to focus on the high-value voice calls they were designed to handle.