12/15/97 CommunicationsWeek 42
1997 WL 12654842
InternetWeek
Copyright 1997 CMP Publications Inc.
Monday, December 15, 1997
694
Bandwidth
Drano For Clogged Networks
Salvatore Salamone
A common telco refrain: Data clogs the public switched network.
After all, those networks were designed to handle calls of fairly
short duration-at least in contrast to some Web surfing connections. And
now they have to deal with all the users dialing into the Internet and
tying up telco switch capacity all day long.
One way around this sore spot is, well, to go around it.
To that end, Xcom Technologies Inc., a regional competitive local
exchange carrier, took a step to off-load some of this nasty data
traffic by bypassing a major bottleneck in today's telecom-centric
public switched networks.
Xcom last week demonstrated its Enterprise Digital Switch 4500 (EDS
4500), an open architecture switching platform that alleviates switch
congestion by bypassing a telco's central office switch.
Once deployed in networks such as Xcom's, IT managers will likely reap
some performance benefits. "Bypass is a good alternative for handling
central office switches getting overwhelmed with data traffic," said
Raymond Lopez, a consultant at Rosewall and Associates, a consulting
firm that designs and installs remote access systems.
But Lopez cautions that much of the benefits of congestion relief will
be hard for the user to notice. "This is two steps down the food chain
for the IT manager," he said. But he also noted that if ISPs and
competitive local exchange carriers do not adopt these methods, the user
would see the opposite effect-performance degradation.
Xcom's approach keeps the data off the telco central office switches
but leverages the intelligence in the public switched telephone network
(PSTN), such as Signaling System 7, along with proprietary Xcom software
to separate data and voice traffic. "You don't have to layer data or fax
on top of voice," said Shawn Lewis, Xcom's vice president of technology
services and chief operating officer. "Don't force switches to do things
they are not good at."
Xcom's approach would take fax traffic and hand it off to a fax
server, for example, rather than passing it through a central office
switch.
Xcom is already working with Ascend Communications on ways to leverage
Xcom's bypass technology so ISPs and corporate customers can take
advantage of the potential new services that the technology can support.
The heart of Xcom's bypass technology is the intelligent link with the
PSTN through SS7. If a user picks up a phone, that connection could be
handled by the Ascend TNT and passed onto the PSTN. But if the user were
to connect to a data network, the call would be handled at the IP layer
and directed without going through the telco central office.
Xcom said new services would be possible by leveraging the intelligent
call handling of SS7. For instance, an ISP might use Xcom's technology
and network to send an alert automatically to an online DSL user that
someone is trying to call and is getting a busy signal.
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