Technology puzzles no more VOIP, VPNs get real at Supercomm [HP/ASND SS7 info]
americasnetwork.com
By David Kopf, July 15, 1998
Things are falling into place. In AN's Jan. 15 "Killer Apps" issue, I wrote
that voice over Internet protocol (VOIP) and virtual private networks (VPNs)
could make a "banner year" out of 1998 for Internet service providers (ISPs).
The sticking point was that both technologies needed some serious
development.
Well, ISPs, you got your wish; Supercomm '98 brought much hope where
VOIP and VPNs are concerned. The show reflected much of what is
developing in the industry's IP space: the maturing of VOIP and VPNs into
technologies that can support wide-scale, carrier-class deployment. These
technologies and applications are growing up to be full-fledged service offerings
that customers want. More importantly, some key Supercomm '98 exhibitors
used the show to roll out products that make those technologies more like real
services than ever.
VOICE
If anything is indicative of VOIP's evolution, the fact that there's actually an
acronym for Internet telephony service providers (ITSPs) should be fairly clear
scrawling on the wall. However, ITSPs have been fairly limited in what they
can offer: mostly, cheap overseas tariff arbitrage services. What's been missing
has been interworking with the public switched telephone network's (PSTN's)
signaling system 7 (SS7) and intelligent network (IN) features, as well as a way
to replicate those features in an IP environment. That's not true any longer.
For starters, Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP; Palo Alto, Calif.) dropped the fairly
significant bomb (to the press that is; not publicly until later in June) that its
OpenCall IN platform, a mainstay voice networking tool, would now provide
SS7/ISUP as well as IP signaling. This takes a system which since 1993 has
been a platform for developing, deploying and managing IN applications to the
next step: interworking with IP for apps that span packet and circuit worlds.
Following HP's lead, Ascend Communications Inc. (Alameda, Calif.)
announced the Ascend Signaling Gateway (ASG), which incorporates
technologies such as HP's OpenCall platform to provide a platform for
translating PSTN services to the 'Net and then some. The ASG will provide
solutions in stages:
Relieving Internet congestion on the PSTN (phase one), available in
August;
Offering VOIP (phase two), released in December; and
IN-based services such as network-wide modem pooling and alternate
call routing to different networks, such as asynchronous transfer mode
(ATM) or frame relay or IP, available Q1-Q2 1999.
Nortel (Brampton, Ontario) tapped Microsoft Corp.'s (Redmond, Wash.)
WindowsNT Server platform as the foundation on which it will build its Internet
telephony offerings. Nortel will use NT for applications such as Internet call
waiting to notify online 'Net users that they have incoming calls and services
that integrate call, message time and contact management.
In similar news, ITXC Corp. (Princeton, N.J.) will support Lucent
Technologies' (Murray Hill, N.J.) PacketStar Internet Telephony Server for
Service Providers (ITS-SP) on its WWeXchange service. WWeXchange links
ITSPs' gateways to each other, and connects WWeXchange affiliates to every
telephony number in the world so that callers can make cheap international calls
anywhere. Now, ITSPs using ITS-SP can now offer services made possible by
WWeXchange to their users.
VPNs
A natural service marriage for VOIP would be with VPNs. Having a private,
secure, IP-based extranet with business partners that includes cheap,
packetized voice would be a service dream for a lot of business customers. To
that end, VPNs are coming right along. The big concerns right now are
standards and how to convince businesses they can trust service providers'
managed network services.
The trust factor will be something service providers must earn over time, and
standardized, reliable technology will be the key to winning that trust. To that
end, the various VPN standards, such as IP Security (IPSec), point-to-point
tunneling protocol (PPTP), layer 2 forwarding (L2F) and layer 2 tunneling
protocol (L2TP) have been taking some time to settle into place as vendors
hype one technology over another.
Bay Networks Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.) showed its protocol leanings by
debuting support for L2TP across three of its product lines to support tunnel
initiation and termination. L2TP support for site-to-site and extranet VPNs is
available for Bay's Contivity Extranet Switch family; its BN, BCN and ASN
Routers; and its Versalar remote access software, Versalar Remote Access
Concentrator (RAC) family.
In other VPN news, Cisco Systems Inc. (San Jose, Calif.) announced its
Service Management system, which lets ISPs plan, provision, monitor and bill
for various differentiated services such as VPNs (as well as VOIP, for that
matter). The system should let ISPs quickly provision VPNs in a
multi-technology environment, as well as monitor VPNs (and other
differentiated IP services) to ensure faults on one service don't impair another.
Looking at Supercomm '98's VOIP and VPN announcements, it's safe to say
that service providers have the technology they need to make these services
real. Whether or not VOIP and VPN services make it to the next evolutionary
level will be up to service providers and their customers.
July 15, 1998 table of contents
Copyright 1998 Advanstar Communications. Please send any technical comments or
questions to the America's Network webmaster.
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