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Technology Stocks : Voice-on-the-net (VON), VoIP, Internet (IP) Telephony -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Stephen B. Temple who wrote (2241)	12/26/1998 8:54:00 PM
From: Stephen B. Temple	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3178

Start-Ups Bridge Gap Dividing IP, PSTN Traffic INTERNETWEEK: Call them next-generation switches for next-generation carriers. Sonus Networks Inc. and Salix Technologies Inc. this week are taking the wraps off carrier-class switches they said will let providers add new services quickly and permit the processing of thousands of simultaneous IP calls. Both the Sonus Gateway Switch and the Salix ETX5000 are Signaling System 7 (SS7)-compatible devices that support both public switched telephone network (PSTN) and public data network (PDN) protocols. The switches aim to provide the scalability and reliability carriers require. More important, perhaps, are the devices' per-port prices. At less than $200 per port, depending upon configuration, the switches cost much less than other routers and IP switches on the market. "Both devices have gotten the cost per port down very sharply," said Probe Research Inc. analyst Hilary Mine. "Both are pushing technology faster. Rather than taking current [proprietary or PC-based] solutions and forcing them to work for carriers, these devices are both service provider-focused." The Sonus Gateway Switch can handle more than 70,000 simultaneous calls and features hot-swappable hardware. Voice quality is assured with delays of less than 100 milliseconds over managed networks. Sonus' Open Services Architecture (OSA), meanwhile, provides a framework for adding new services, said Sonus chairman Rubin Gruber. By tapping OSA's policy- and script-based service definitions and coupling them with open APIs and internetworked links to SS7, carriers can create enhanced services. That type of flexibility will be important to carriers, said Oliver Luckett, senior IP services architect at Qwest Communications International Inc., which intends to evaluate the Sonus switch. "The plans I have are not necessarily to replicate cheap long distance," he said. "I want to create new, enhanced services and I hope this architecture will let us do it. " Salix is pitching its switch for local or long distance services, said Salix president Dan Simpkins. Based on Salix's Enhanced Telephony Xchange Architecture, the device is designed to support IP, TDM or ATM. Dynamic provisioning lets the switch juggle various traffic types and use policies to determine how traffic gets routed. That's coupled with quality-of-service parameters that have been built into the device, Simpkins said. The ETX5000 scales to 100,000 ports, handling up to 50,000 calls simultaneously. Both the Sonus and Salix switches are expected to be released in mid-to-late 1999. [Copyright 1998, CMP Publications]