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To: TNR who wrote (11)	3/25/1998 1:22:00 AM
From: Bradley W. Price	Respond to of 46

I believe Ascend is getting the SS7 technology from old XCOM, now Olicom. SS7 is very important! Article from telephony. bp Switching & Transmission March 16, 1998 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Back to the future Carriers turn to traditional voice equipment to build out new IP networks WAYNE CARTER, Associate Editor-Switching & Transmission The explosive growth of data traffic in this decade has spawned the realization that the future of networks lies in the ability to carry voice traffic as an adjunct to data's dominant presence. It likely will be many years before data-first networks entirely replace the huge installed base of voice networks, but numerous companies are springing up with plans to deliver a full package of voice and data services over fiber networks using Internet protocol (IP) as the primary mode of delivery. Can such networks deliver the same quality of service (QOS) and variety of features for voice customers that traditional voice networks can offer? Yes. But to deliver the full package of quality and features such carriers may have to wait for new equipment or turn to more traditional voice network equipment. Qwest Communications, perhaps the most visible of the new carrier breed, is deploying routing and access equipment from Cisco Systems and Hughes Network Systems, but it also is deploying Northern Telecom's DMS-250, a circuit switch designed for traditional voice networks. Qwest is using Nortel equipment to deliver its OC-192 backbone, but the DMS-250s are crucial because of their capacity to provision enhanced voice services. <Picture: stnewsfig1.gif (16585 bytes)> The combination of port density and features that the Nortel switch delivers aren't available in IP switching equipment today, explained Dana Filip, Qwest's network engineering vice president. IP switching vendors aren't standing still, however. Ascend Communications, which offers solutions for frame relay, asynchronous transfer mode and IP delivery, is developing systems that will allow IP networks to achieve the switching capability of traditional voice networks. The solution uses Ascend's IP Navigator and maps the IP packets onto an ATM backbone. "With a core ATM network, you have the tools to provide those kinds of services," said Peter Joy, Ascend's IP product marketing manager. But the crucial element missing from data-switching equipment is SS7. Data network providers are using so-called SS7 gateways that allow some access to SS7 intelligence. Those gateways aren't yet delivering the features or density of circuit switches, but new solutions are being developed. Bay Networks is introducing a new remote access concentrator that communicates with the SS7 network to deliver voice-class services to data calls (see figure). The new access concentrator targets large service providers rather than Internet service providers, said Kieran Taylor, Bay's product marketing manager for the Internet Telecom Business Group. The setup will allow the ISPs and other data network operators to access the remote access concentrator in carriers' central offices--eliminating the cost of buying their own--and to get SS7 capability in the bargain. It's also beneficial for voice carriers trying to mesh data traffic into their networks. Incumbent carriers and telcos want to incorporate data into their network, Taylor said.

To: TNR who wrote (11)	3/25/1998 1:31:00 AM
From: Bradley W. Price	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 46

XCOM is the tie to Ascend, Olicom bought out. bp from nwfusion: The SS7-ization of the Internet By Daniel Briere and Christine Heckart L eave it to the little guys to do what's important in the market. Little-known competitive local exchange carrier XCOM Technologies, Inc., which humorously dubs itself "the data phone company,'' has come up with a way to bypass heavily burdened central office switches when data traffic is involved. XCOM's first client, Ascend, is probably one of many that is going to start using the smarts of the voice network to figure out what the heck to do with all the data traffic that is blowing through the central office. The XCOM platform separates data from normal voice traffic using features and intelligence in the public switched telephone network (PSTN), such as Signaling System 7 (SS7) and proprietary software developed by XCOM. Acting like a traffic cop, XCOM's box identifies and directs incoming data straight to a terminal server, bypassing the voice switch entirely. The result? Data is off-loaded from the congested PSTN, enabling better connectivity and true integration of data and voice traffic. What will make hot technologies such as virtual private networks hum, and bring IP telephony folk into the mainstream, is the interface of the IP layers with the smarts of existing SS7 databases, to do the things that make sense to all of us. Recall that it is SS7 and centralized databases that allow you to do geographic and time-based routing of phone calls. If your New York office were closed, then all calls would be routed to your California office, which would still be open. The same would be true of IP-based telephony calls. The need for similar routing is clearly there. When MCI launched its Vault capability last year, if you squinted at the architecture schematics, you could see dotted lines from the IP switching layer to the SS7 data access points in the MCI architecture. This was really the first public play for serious integration of data networking with voice networking because it was being done on more than just a transport layer. As you see telcos such as GTE preparing to do battle with extensive nationwide IP networks, a critical piece has to be SS7 integration. Still, achieving SS7 and data network integration won't be a trivial task. For example, data networks, and the Internet in particular, handle calls in fundamentally different ways. There are a lot of neat features that carriers have developed over time, such as routing by area code, that will be tough to carry over to the data environment. But then there are features that reside in the data network that should work easily in an SS7-data network environment. For example, look-ahead routing, which scouts forward in the network for congestion and busy signals, should work well. After all, SS7 is a packet network that talks to all the switches and other network adjunct devices.