VOICEOVERIP
Homepage CaseStudy References Webservices Links Feedback Directory Directory2 Fun Button News
Swedish Carrier Utfors Selects RAD's IPmux to Build World's First IP-Based Nationwide Data and Telephony Network
RAD's Concept for Classic Telephony-over-IP Provides
Advanced IP Services over Fiber Backbone
Utfors, a leading Swedish Internet and telecom operator, is building a new type of network to converge data and traditional telephony. The world's first carrier network based solely on IP, Ethernet and DWDM, Utfors's network leapfrogs traditional technologies such as Frame Relay, ATM and SDH. Its fiber backbone has an initial transmission capacity of 1,200 Gbps (Gigabits per second) and an initial routing/switching capacity of over 2,000 Gbps.
25 Times the Capacity of Existing Internet Services
"With our network, we can give the customer a 100 Mbps IP port for Internet access, VPN and traditional voice for less than $5,000 per month," says Utfors CTO Sten Nordell. "We provide up to 25 times the capacity of data, voice and Internet traffic for the same price that competitors charge for Internet access alone." RAD's IPmux will connect business customers' PBXs to the IP network for delivery of traditional voice communications over the same infrastructure that is used for data. IPmux is a key component of the new network, enabling Utfors to offer free domestic intracompany calls, contributing to the low cost of the service. RAD worked together with Lagercrantz, its local distributor in Sweden, and Utfors to tailor the IPmux to the advanced features of the Utfors network.
RAD's IPmux Family of products converts E1/T1 voice and data streams into packets for transmission over IP and Ethernet-based networks (TDM over IP). The IPmux-4, with four E1/T1 ports, serves as a central-site device for smaller networks or as a branch device in large corporations. The IPmux-16, designed for central sites, supports four, eight, 12 or 16 E1/T1 ports, thereby affording a migration path as traffic increases. The IPmux-1, featuring one E1/T1 or four BRI ISDN interfaces, affords optimal, cost-effective performance for smaller sites.
"Winning this $10 million contract in the world's most advanced IP market puts RAD in the forefront of companies offering telephony solutions over IP," says Jan Hansen, General Manager of RAD Scandinavia. "It reinforces RAD's concept that the surest migration path to VoIP is classic telephony over IP, since it is a mature, stable technology that can provide an immediate return on investment to customers such as Utfors."
About Utfors AB
Utfors is a leading Swedish Internet and telecoms operator that delivers Internet Protocol-based, high speed services to companies and the consumer. In 2000, Utfors will complete its own 4,500 km long broadband fiber optic data and telephony network. The broadband network connects the 50 largest towns and cities of southern and central Sweden with Oslo, Copenhagen and Helsinki. Today, Utfors has more than 250,000 telephony and Internet customers. It employs 130 people located in Stockholm, Uppsala and Överkalix. The major shareholders are Norsk Vekst and Litorina Kapital.
RAD Data Communications designs, manufactures and markets a broad range of high quality data communications and telecommunications product solutions for carriers, service providers and corporate networks. RAD is a member of the $390 million RAD Group of companies, a world leader in networking and internetworking product solutions.
Intelliswitch Gateway
Benefits of the Intelliswitch Gateway vs. Router Based Products
The Intelliswitch Gateway is a carrier grade solution for implementation of voice over an IP network such as the public Internet or private network. The Intelliswitch gateway was designed from the ground up as feature rich solution for voice and fax over IP. Often we are asked to compare our products to those of other companies. Many other solutions are router based products that are not designed to be a carrier grade solution for resellers, but are rather transport mechanisms for companies to implement a point to point transfer of voice or data over an existing network connection.
The Intelliswitch Gateway is not a router based product, but rather a Windows NT based product that provides the flexibility of a programmable PC based switch. Our product is run on a Compaq server mounted in an industrial rackmount chassis will full many redundancy options such as dual power supplies, RAID Level 5 for data security, mirrored servers, and NT clustering. Our product is a true open system built on industry standard hardware and developed to meet industry software standards. The use of industry standard interfaces and coders allow our gateway to interface with other products that meet the same standards. Without being locked in to proprietary systems, we are able to modify our product rapidly to add new features and implement new coders and standards as they evolve in this highly dynamic market.
The Intelliswitch Gateway provides centralized billing via Call Detail Records stored to a SQL server and can provide integration to the DB2 file format on the IBM AS/400. Router based products do not provide CDR information in these formats and are not flexible for carriers and resellers who need to identify individual users and provide the necessary information to provide complex billing. The Intelliswitch Gateway performs database lookups to verify users before they gain access to the network (conserving bandwidth from the users who should not have access to the system). Users can also be assigned to groups, which can be useful for tracking usage, by sales agents who are often paid commission on time used by their customers. Flexibility in assigning these groups is essential for management of a large reseller with many agents.
Our gateway also provides a wide range of features and protocols. Support for T1/E1 via MF, DTMF, R2, ISDN, and SS7 are available. We support many different enhanced services such as allowing for reorigination (providing users the opportunity to place another call without dialing back into the gateway), voice prompting, and least cost routing. Least cost routing is provided by tables that provide a highly flexible means of having multiple routes available for the network traffic compared to solutions that are fixed point to point. Alarms can be sent via page or email when these links are not available for traffic.
Real time fax via T.38 is supported compared to many router-based products, which use a standard 64K modulation for transmission. This 64K is almost 3 times more than what is needed and used in the T.38 standard for real time faxing. This allows the Intelliswitch Gateway to send 3 faxes in the same bandwidth as its router based counterparts.
As a PC based product, the Intelliswitch Gateway provides for high scalability with up to 5 T1 or E1's per chassis with unlimited chassis' supported. Additional cards can be added to provide more capacity, whereas router based solution demands that the user purchases an entire new unit to provide support for additional T1/E1's. The price is moderately comparable to router based solutions and a similar cost point is reached at a certain capacity as the additional cost of buying complete router units to add an additional E1/T1 overtakes the price of adding cards to our PC based solution.
Overall, the Intelliswitch gateway has many advantages over a router-based solution when used as a carrier grade solution. For resellers, it provides the necessary means of transporting calls in the most efficient manner, via IP, PSTN, or both in the same chassis along with the necessary means of tracking and billing the customers. You have the flexibility of providing levels of service based on cost and quality to your users, which allows you the broadest market for your products.