Changing the network's core. Communication News article. [ASND references]
E-Net's CEO says putting voice over your data network is easy,
and can make you a hero.
by Ripley Hotch, Editor
nelsonpub.com
Rob Veschi, president and CEO of e-Net, a three-year-old packet voice company, doesn't back
down from blunt talk or bullies. He really doesn't need to, given that he was a semi-professional
kick-boxer in his native Texas.
But he doesn't believe in provoking fights; that's not the way to win. So in the tussle of putting
voice over data networks, he says, don't lick them, join them.
Veschi started e-Net to enter the voice-over-packet networks market that has generated so much
interest in the last year. Adding telephony to an existing wide area network, he says, saves money
and creates a stronger network.
"I just think that people underestimate the expense of maintaining two completely separate
infrastructures in the corporate environment," Veschi says. "The money you save in the local
exchange and the interexchange are probably a pittance by comparison to the administrative costs
of maintaining two completely different infrastructures."
At the same time, he sees no reason for the interface to change. Everyone is used to the telephone.
The interface is simple, the dial tone is there, and it works.
"I want to change the core of telecommunications technology while leaving the face the same," he
says. "That's why we call what we do data telephony as opposed to voice over IP, voice over
ATM, or voice over this, voice over that, because we really don't care what the infrastructure is."
Attempts at packet-based telephony over the Internet have ended up being mostly silly, Veschi
says, and people won't use it. Packet voice has been given a bad rap because of inadequate early
implementations.
"We had too many people jump into this burgeoning industry, and people are beginning to believe
that Internet business applications and telecommunications technology are `toyware,' " Veschi
says. "They pick a free copy of some Internet telephony software and they sort of play with it
between themselves and their friend in Germany, and they get the CB effect. When you walk in the
door and say `I'd like to talk to you about integrating your communications infrastructure,' they go
`Uh-uh. Been there, done that.' "
E-Net's major product, Telecom 2000, performs the functions of a PBX across an Ethernet
backbone. Another product, the Telecom 2000 Digital Trunk Interface, connects PBX trunk lines
across a wide area data network, transporting calls via IP across frame relay, DSL, ISDN, or
ATM networks. As a result, companies no longer need to divide T1s between voice and data
because voice packets are generated only when someone is talking.
"His concept is, people are buying data, so why not take voice to the desktop," says Dominick
DeAngelo, vice president of IP services for Sprint. "It's brilliant to put it on Ethernet."
E-Net has trademarked the term "data telephony" for its patented approach to voice over
packet-based networks. The technology does work-the company uses it on its own WAN
between its administrative offices in Germantown, Md., and its research center in Austin, Texas.
(Veschi doesn't advocate using the Internet unless you're willing to put up with the uneven quality.)
Over the WAN, the voice is clear, and all the traditional telephone commands work. Calls can be
set up with a handset or using a PC interface.
Dealing with the public telephone network
Using the WAN data circuits for voice avoids the regulatory taxes on long-distance voice calls,
because there are no surcharges on data traffic. The problem is going out from the WAN to the
PSTN. In most packet voice applications, there is no easy connection between the LAN PBX and
the local network. E-Net thinks it has that problem solved.
"We looked at five other designers of similar stuff," says DeAngelo, "and found e-Net to be the
only one going to the desktop without a lot of added software, and it was using Q.931 signaling."
Since most voice networks are using SS7 (the ITU's Signaling System 7 standard), it is important
to have a gateway out. "When you start putting all this stuff over a backbone, then getting on-net
and off-net is the killer stuff. So you can call the local deli from your office," says DeAngelo.
Providing the signaling mechanisms among the various protocols amounts to "cracking the code"
that makes PBX LANs interoperate. Veschi is set on using those industry signaling standards.
"Everything we do today is based around one or two standards," he says. "When we started back
in the early `90s, there were no data telephony standards or standards for voice over IP, so we
adopted the telecommunications standards. All the messages flying back and forth for call setup
and tear down, all the messages flying back and forth for call transfer, call waiting, three-way
calling, those are all straight out of the Q.931 specification." That turns out to be an important
decision for interoperability of the data 7network and the PSTN.
"SS7 is the default trunking, so if you interconnect you have to be able to talk to the traditional
public network," says Mike Viren, senior vice president of strategic planning for Tampa-based
Intermedia, the country's largest CLEC now that AT&T has bought TCG. Intermedia, like Sprint,
is planning for an ATM-based world. Intermedia wants to let other people like Cascade or e-Net
handle the gateway, and then let edge devices handle the call as a data element.
Although Viren has some concerns about the scalability of the e-Net technology, he thinks that it
or something like it offers a great deal to CLECs as well as enterprises.
"This whole market will break loose sometime next year," he says. "Look what happened when
technology allowed us to wed the modem and the router into Ascend's and US Robotics'
boxes-for $35,000, you could become an ISP overnight. That whole market exploded. Rob's
company and others are bringing out low-cost databased telephony-which will push costs way
down below the PBX requirement. People can become CLECs for a lot less investment."
To deal with the problem of scalability, Veschi has signed on for a partnership with Summa Four,
Inc., a provider of standards-based programmable switching platforms, to create a carrier-class
voice-over-IP gateway.
When they announced the agreement, both companies cited studies that predicted the IP voice
gateway field to grow to a $1.8 billion market by the year 2001.
The gateway will combine cards containing up to 32 Texas Instruments digital signal processors
with controller cards that support up to 16 T1/E1 spans, to scale up to more than 1,000
simultaneous calls in a single-shelf, carrier-certified chassis.
"We're concentrating on the high end and the low end of the market," says Veschi with a laugh.
Unlike some other manufacturers, e-Net is willing to send out starter kits (at $1,695 each). Veschi
refers to it as "seeding" markets, and inquiries have ranged from the SOHO market to international
carriers.
"It is an educational sell today," Veschi says. "The marketplace is becoming much more educated
on this technology much more swiftly than any I've ever seen. We've gone from people walking in
the door saying `What is it, I don't understand, why do I care,' to people coming directly to the
booth [at a trade show], looking for us, saying `Hey, I understand you guys have this, and how are
you guys different.' People are taking the time to get educated because it does offer such a huge
advantage to them that they can crack the quality of service issue."
Making heroes of network managers
Given Veschi's history in network management, it isn't surprising that he thinks of e-Net's
products as a way to ease that problem. When he was selling the products, he says, he saw that
the telecomm and datacomm managers had the same problems.
"When we sat down and started talking about all the various aspects of integration of voice and
data into a single ubiquitous infrastructure and the management thereof, we could see that
obviously it would become a much more critical infrastructure if all of your corporate assets
resided on it," he says.
"The customer is already spending the money we're talking about spending on voice today. If they
transfer that investment over to building a more robust management infrastructure, over a period of
time they end up saving a lot of money."
That's where he thinks that network managers have a great deal to gain. Merging the networks
offers a simplified and more cost-effective structure that allows managers to save their
organizations a lot of money.
"Desktop convergence may not be the first step, but it is a step," he says. "The gateway
technology that you're getting yourself comfortable with is really the starting point, not the ultimate
end-all be-all. It is the ability to take your telephone with you wherever you go, as opposed to
having it forwarded nine or ten times-to actually have a physical device that wherever you go,
whatever office you sit down in, people can call the same number and actually get you. Or you can
plug your phone and your computer in any outlet in any of your facilities and notification of all your
voice mail shows up."
Although the attraction of telephony over data networks to most organizations is the money saved
in bypassing the LEC and IXC, Veschi says, the benefits of combining the infrastructures goes far
beyond that.
"Just consolidating the management gets rid of the administration nightmare of trying to maintain
two or three separate infrastructures," he says. "Now people are deciding to put a third
infrastructure in for video because they don't want to impact the LAN that they have today."
Veschi is not an advocate of video as it exists today, although he thinks it will come of age in two
or three years. But for network managers, he says, the important thing is "there's going to come a
day no matter what they do, whether it's voice or video or data, there are applications out there
that are going to require them to re-engineer their networks. So if they're going to re-engineer their
network for any application, why not re-engineer it for the application that costs the organization
the most on the bottom line, which is telecommunications?"
The money is there to do it, he says, in just the amount that is budgeted for current
telecommunications solutions. "This is an opportunity for us as network managers to finally become
a profit center. Say: `We'll give you a robust architecture, we'll give you excellent management,
and we'll return dollars to your bottom line. What we ask in return is give us two-thirds of this pot
of money over here to do it.' "
Tactical communications
Veschi's experience with the government market makes him sensitive to the issue of tactical
communications, which is an industrial as well as a government requirement.
"Tactical communications is a key market for convergence," he says. Large corporations in
international markets are often in buildings they don't own, and have to shift their communications
quickly. They also cannot be sure of security in the telephone network-especially as most
governments are not willing to allow strong encryption in any public network.
"But when you look at it," Veschi says, "these guys already have corporate data infrastructure into
all of these countries that is privatized. The thing that is not privatized is telecommunications. So if
you can offer them a technology that affords them the luxury of turning the audio into a data
application using the same encryption technology that they use to encrypt the CAD/CAM files
between each of the facilities, and if you can allow them to set up communications where they
walk in and plug into an RJ45 in any building and have the same telephone number wherever they
go, you've solved a major problem."
The other end of the market
Another network that will be using ATM over fiber, and whose potential is overlooked, is cable.
E-Net recently signed an agreement to provide its software to cable modem system manufacturer
Com21, Inc. It will also allow cable operators to offer voice services incrementally to their
data-over-cable subscribers.
Again, e-Net depends on standards for cable telephone connections, so that customers can use
standard phone sets, including cordless phones, modems, and fax machines.
It gives residential users-and remote users-the data network and PBX connections they are
used to in the office, Veschi says.
These alliances and markets are a tall order for a company with only 27 employees, but hugely
successful companies in this market have started with less. It is, after all, the vision that counts.
Sidebar:
How to make a sale
Rob Veschi, president and CEO of e-Net, likes to tell the story of how he got the contract for
tactical communications during the Gulf War. It hinges on his confidence in what he could bring off.
But even earlier, Veschi had a can-do attitude. He started his career by working for a Texas
distributor of Sony business products. One product did DTMF translation, but had no
management capabilities.
"So I went out and I bought some books on software development and databases," he says, "and
I designed an application that would actually poll this device, and find out the status of the device
and we could actually shut down the coupler if the device had faulted. So I basically went into the
polling network management business."
From there a series of jobs got him ever deeper into network management product
development-he was a speaker at conferences on network management, and got very involved
in SNMP. All that eventually led to a position with I-Net, a company that principally laid cable for
government agencies.
He had his own division, which operated as a separate business built around expert-based
network management architecture and network design. He grew that division to a significant size,
and one of the most important contracts came from the Defense Department. The general in
charge of the Defense Information Systems Agency (formerly the Defense Communications
Agency) was Al Short.
Short remembers that the agency was having problems with its computers and communications. It
had had promises from vendors who could not produce. He was told he should listen to I-Net, he
says, partly because it was a woman-owned company, and partly because of this "very brash but
very bright young man."
"We were looking for network control capabilities," Short says. "Many of the computers didn't
talk to each other, and there were no good network management capabilities. Rob was confident,
and made this pitch on their capabilities and said what he could do, and I was so impressed I told
my small business guy, `Give this guy an opportunity, and when he fails then kick him out.' "
Veschi himself clearly relishes the challenge he took up, and the threat pleased him as much as
anything else.
The fact is, Short says, "He didn't fail. To have someone come in and say `I can do this,' and then
turn around and do it was remarkable."
A few years later, when Veschi was ready to start e-Net, he went to Short and asked him to be
chairman of the new company's board. The general agreed.
He occasionally has to remind Veschi, who is a pilot and avid water sports fan, to be somewhat
less of a risk-taker. It's one kind of caution he promises to heed.
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