AINN, are you talking to these poor guys???
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April 06, 1998, TechWeb News
As telcos target data, and ISPs move into voice -- New systems tackle cross-over conundrums
By Salvatore Salamone
Today's cross-over market-where telephone companies struggle to handle data traffic while Internet service providers (ISPs) grapple their way into the voice business-has produced lots of technical problems but few solutions.
Among the problems: telephone switches flooded with data traffic, poor-quality Internet telephony services, little call control on the backbone and no billing at the end of the day.
Systems to solve these problems had been lacking, until a veritable flood of new "carrier class" products began coming to market in the last several weeks, in such categories as Internet telephony gateways, access concentrators and routers enhanced for voice traffic over IP networks. The products all seek to address the fundamental challenge of improving the handling of packetized services over existing networks. Finding a solution will let telephone network operators incorporate data traffic into their circuit-switched telephone network. It will also allow ISPs to deliver Internet voice service that is indistinguishable from regular telephone service and it will let both groups handle packetized traffic more reliably across their backbone data networks. The new systems' carrier-class status implies they will handle higher volumes, deliver better call control and enable billing.
Demand for such systems is evident from service providers such as Xcom Technologies Inc., a competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC) in Cambridge, Mass. Xcom was looking to roll out data services, including the wholesaling of ports and access lines to regional ISPs. These ISPs, in turn, were looking to offer such packetized offerings as fax and voice-over-IP.
"We realized that the public switched network is a poor place to pass data," said Mark Washburn, Xcom's vice president of sales and marketing.
From the start, Xcom's strategy, like that of many data service providers, was to offload data traffic from expensive central-office switches and to convert circuit-switched traffic to IP at the earliest possible point. These two tasks become more critical to a service provider's economic welfare as they look to support more packetized voice traffic. But how is that done?
"Data ought to be stripped off the public switched telephone network as soon as possible in a phone call. But we didn't see any products that could do that," Mr. Washburn said. As a result, Xcom developed its own bypass gateway, based on Signaling System 7 (SS7) call control technology, but it is still seeking a better way.
Xcom isn't the only service provider looking to improve packet services, analysts said. "ISPs are rolling out new value-added services like IP telephony to distinguish themselves from each other," said Eric Paulak, an analyst with the Gartner Group Inc., a Stamford, Conn.-based consultancy.
So far, these services have been mainly offered by consumer-oriented and lower-tier ISPs and are not aimed at the lucrative business market, Mr. Paulak said. The reason: latency. More specifically, available systems have lacked quality of service (QoS) features to improve the transmission of packetized-voice over IP, frame relay and ATM networks.
Working all the angles
The recent rash of new products seems to address some of these issues, and more announcements are expected this month from vendors including Hypercom Network Systems. Many vendors are attacking the problem from a different angle-or in some cases, several different angles. No one is delivering standardized end-to-end solutions. And so service providers face a difficult evaluation and selection process among often conflicting and nonstandard approaches.
Some vendors, such as Lucent Technologies Inc. and Northern Telecom Ltd., are trying to find ways for telephone companies and other large service providers to offer huge numbers of dial access ports to regional ISPs so they can accommodate the growing number of users who want access to packetized services.
ACT Networks Inc., Ascend Communications Inc., Bay Networks Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc. are also trying to give service providers a way to packetize voice traffic in the central office and then carry it over IP, frame relay or ATM data networks. These companies have also enhanced their software offerings so networks can leverage QoS features to deal with the latency issue of packetized voice.
Many vendors, such as VocalTec Communications Ltd. and Cisco, are coming to market with gateway technology that allows the transfer of packetized voice and fax traffic between the circuit-switched telephone network and the packet-switched networks based on the International Telecommunication Union's H.323 standard.
Some of these approaches are co-opting the SS7 technology that handles out-of-band call setup and other functions in the circuit-switched network, and are applying it to the Internet or across both networks. In this way, ISPs can reroute traffic away from busy switches and routers, and also begin adding such features as call forwarding to IP telephony services. Stratus Computer Inc., a long-time supplier of SS7 technology to the circuit-switched telephone network, is working with Ascend, Bay Networks, Cisco and 3Com Corp. to develop a standardized SS7 approach.
Despite progress in such areas as SS7 and H.323, "standards do not exist across the board for all of these techniques," said Steve Sazegari, analyst with the Tele.Mac consultancy in Foster City, Calif. "It'll be way beyond the year 2000 before they do."
In the meantime, he added, "a lot of the smaller operators are as confused as they can be."
Recent product announcements include the following:
- Ascend jumped into the IP telephony market last month with the announcement of its MultiVoice strategy. The company said it will introduce products that support voice over IP, frame relay and ATM networks. Ascend will also enhance its IP Navigator management product to support an absolute QoS for voice delivered over these types of networks.
- Last month, Cisco delivered the third phase of its data/voice/video integration strategy with the introduction of multiservice gateways. These included gateways from network protocols to switching protocols and from IP to ATM.
At the same time, Cisco announced that through its IOS software, all of its multiservice platforms, including its 2600 and 3600 series routers, MC3810 multiservice access concentrators and IGX and LightStream 1010 ATM switches, will support H.323
- Bay announced the Access Cornerstone of its Adaptive Networking strategy, enhancements to some existing network edge devices and a software upgrade-all aimed at delivering a wider array of IP services over the Internet. The Access Cornerstone unites all of Bay's efforts in two areas: high-speed access and the ability to deliver IP services, like voice and fax over IP or virtual private networking, over a mixed-vendor Internet backbone. To enable such networking, Bay announced enhancements to its BayStack Advanced Remote Node (ARN) access router, a DSL service concentrator and BayRS 12.10, a new version of its routing software.
- Also in March, Nortel acquired Aptis Communications Inc., an access concentrator and remote access data networking company. Nortel said that the acquisition will strengthen its position in the access and virtual private networking market. This would allow Nortel to offer carriers and ISPs the ability to deliver secure, integrated voice and data IP services, such as voice and fax over IP and virtual private networking services.
Salvatore Salamone is an InternetWeek editor at large.
Copyright (c) 1998 CMP Media Inc.
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