Career Postings | Enterprise Gateways and IADs |
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| Written by Bob Emmerson | |
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Other SBC issues include the fact that users trying to place calls from behind UDP blocked NATs and firewall devices will often fail. SBCs have none or little logic for making sure the calls are set up in an optimal way; i.e., to use direct media when possible (same LAN, ICE, STUN), and only relay media when necessary. When media has to be relayed, the optimal transport mechanisms on each call leg must be selected. RealTunnel addresses this issue by incorporating logic for detecting type of NATs and firewalls in use and can therefore employ the shortest path and the optimal transport protocol. QoS mechanisms for both TCP and SSL are employed.
Targeting SMBs The latter product targets the SMB market. It’s a multiservice access gateway that provides a one-box solution for carrier-hosted VoIP/IP Centrex, Internet access, and business connectivity services. It includes a SIP gateway, an IP router, stateful inspection firewall, VPN, 24-port powered (802.3af) fast Ethernet switch with Gigabit uplinks, and two expansion slots for network and voice interface modules.
As illustrated in figure 3, the integrated gateway and QoS mechanisms enable the delivery of voice service to IP and TDM phones. The two interface slots provide user-configurable customization for up to three T1s, and the FXS and FXO ports are available for analog connectivity and remote survivability. With 24 power over Ethernet, ports can power IP phones and wireless access points, as well as provide connectivity to PCs and other network devices and PCs. Do It In SiliconThe digital home is a fast growing market, and from a QoS/QoE perspective it is one of the most demanding. Today’s home gateways/IADs have to distribute multiple streams of content within the home in real time; intelligently allocate resources to competing applications to avoid degradation of service; act as the gateway to and from the outside world; validate and authenticate users; protect digital assets from unauthorized intruders; and be low cost, manageable, and easy to use. A very tall order!
Traditional processors employ interrupt-driven processes to handle network traffic, but this model breaks down when required to handle continuous high-bandwidth traffic together with sensitive real-time streams. Ubicom (www.ubicom.com) is located in Sunnyvale, Calif., and the company’s core competence is communications and media processors (CMPs). The architecture of these silicon chips enables sustained highthroughput processing while simultaneously classifying and prioritizing delay-sensitive traffic. Packets can stream directly to on-chip memory and be processed by any of the 10 independent threads. The multi-threaded architecture allows each of the 10 threads to run a different application while still maintaining deterministic processing for each thread. This guarantees that no thread will affect another’s performance resulting in a powerful combination; i.e., high-performance routing and high-quality streaming. Owera (www.owera.com), a Norwegian SIP and provisioning company, provides turnkey VoIP solutions based on a Ubicom CMP. Owera provides a robust SIP SDK that includes protocols, drivers, and applications that have certified with many softswitch platforms and proxies. The combined technologies have enabled the development of solutions that detect different streams and automatically separate them into 255 different queues. This results in an IAD that delivers high-fidelity VoIP together with low-latency online gaming, P2P file sharing, Web browsing, e-mailing, and streaming IPTV. With the addition of Owera’s remote-provisioning system, the gateways and IADs are offered to the market as residential, robustperformance solutions for IP services with the focus on quality and profitability. Bob Emmerson, our European Editor, co-authored with Jeff Pulver the book, Run Your Organization in Real Time. He can be reached at bemmerson@vonmag.com. |
