September 1998

• IEN 6000
• Network Exchange 2210
• Hammer IP Telephony Test Suite

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IEN 6000

Hypercom Network Systems
2851 West Kathleen Road
Phoenix, AZ 85023-4053
Ph.: 602-504-5000
www.hypercom.com/netsys

The IEN 6000 (IEN = Integrated Enterprise Network) is a carrier class voice/data gateway that provides the kind of density and scalability required in a central office. The gateway can concentrate up to 1,024 voice or fax connections, and uses digital signal processor (DSP)-based voice compression technology to ensure efficiency.

The latest Hypercom offering features all of the Quality of Service enhancements inherent in the company's IEN product line and also features Modem Relay, a Hypercom innovation that enables analog modem traffic to be sent over the Internet (or other packet-based infrastructures) between IEN devices without necessitating conversion to data traffic by another modem. It supports the latest ITU standards for voice-over-IP and voice-over-Frame Relay, G.723.1 and G.729.A, and features added voice compression technology that enables a single card to provide both voice-over-IP and voice-over-Frame Relay interfaces. This ends up minimizing investment in hardware with the additional benefit of simplified management. The IEN 6000 provides full fault tolerance and hardware redundancy by virtue of its dual power supplies and hot swappable processor modules. Other features include:

• Integrated cell/packet/circuit switching.
• Integrated LAN router.
• Integrated CSU/DSU.
• Integrated dial backup.
• Integrated data compression and encryption.
• Integrated legacy to IP gateway.
• Support for TDM and packetized voice, video, fax.
• Supports analog and digital voice port connections.
• Centralized management with flash memory for downloading software and configuration changes.

For more information, contact Hypercom at 602-504-5000 or visit the company's Web site at www.hypercom.com.

Network Exchange 2210

NETRIX Corporation
13595 Dulles Technology Drive
Herndon, Virginia 20171-3424
Ph.: 703-742-6000
www.netrix.com

The Network Exchange connects between the corporate PBX (using either a DS1or E1 interface) and the LAN (using a standard Ethernet interface). The existing LAN carries voice, data, and fax traffic between the PBX and the egress to the WAN. Along the way, voice traffic is compressed from 64 Kbps down to 5.5 Kbps, and is shaped by the Network Exchange into a "well behaved" IP stream. Each Network Exchange has one IP address per box, greatly reducing network administration. Multiple units can be deployed within the enterprise to handle PBXs, analog handsets, and even ISDN-based PBXs.

The Network Exchange can operate with any WAN technology, such as public frame relay or ATM services, leased lines, satellites, and IP Virtual Private Network (VPN) services. In certain networks, such as those using public frame relay services where strict enforcement of bandwidth allocation is required, the Network Exchange can provide the WAN interface - thus providing Quality of Service (QoS) with CIR enforcement. To deliver QoS for all network calls, Netrix' multi-class networking prioritizes calls on an individual basis, ensuring voice quality without sacrificing data performance. The product takes advantage of a fairness algorithm to police line usage and prevent any one application from using all of the available bandwidth. If necessary, the 2210 can segment large frames to minimize delay variance.

The 2210 is also able to switch multiple calls over a single PVC, which creates significant cost savings when using public frame relay services. The 2210 provides this switching capability over frame relay networks that support switched virtual circuits (SVCs), delivering advanced call setup and reroute capabilities.

The advanced networking capabilities of the 2210 also include non-Netrix equipment and services. The 2210 is able to treat PBXs, host computers, public services, or any entities to which the 2210 may want to route calls as though they were nodes in the 2210 network. This powerful capability allows load sharing across the network, hunt groups, dynamic backup of calls across a variety of services, and definition of specific routes that calls can take across the network.

Finally, the extensive statistics-gathering capabilities of the 2210 gateway provide real-time accounting information that is useful for management and billing.

For more information, contact the company at 703-742-6000 or visit their Web site at www.netrix.com.

Hammer IP Telephony Test Suite

Hammer Technologies
226 Lowell Street
Wilmington, MA 01887
Ph.: 978-694-9959
www.hammer.com

The solution duplicates the multitude of possibilities inherent in a real world telephony network by providing a full spectrum of physical interfaces, including T1, E1, ISDN (PRI and BRI), as well as analog. Available signaling methods include SS7 (North American and International), ISDN, and CAS (channel associated signaling), and multiple interfaces and signaling methods can be combined as necessary to test a particular IP telephony network.

The system comes preconfigured with several "canned" tests to assess the network's capacity and true quality of service. The programmable and dynamic call mixes are easy to set up and manage, and tracked results include busy hour call handling, call start-up delays, and inter-prompt delays. A set of prerecorded speech samples specifically designed to test IP telephony codecs and audio quality management algorithms are also included. These speech samples are developed in keeping with the ITU-T (International Telecommunication Union) P.800 specification for telephone transmission quality. The samples can be simultaneously played at programmable rates on up to 120 channels, with the ability to monitor or record for later playback and analysis.

The Hammer IP Telephony Test Suite also offers comprehensive DTMF (dual tone multi frequency) sending and receiving tests, in order to assure correct handling of the DTMF signals. Tests can be run at a variety of signal amplitudes and volume to cover DTMF management scenarios likely to be encountered in the real world.

Hammer plans to offer H.323 testing capabilities by the Fall of 1998. Specialized H.323 protocol features that will be added to the TCP/IP test stack will provide IP telephony voice and data analysis, capturing H.323 messages over LAN or telephony connections. Another proposed feature will deal with H.323 load testing, enabling developers to test specific traffic patterns and load at the H.323 level to more fully assess the system's ability to handle different traffic patterns and characteristics.

For more information, contact the company at 978-694-9959 or visit their Web site at www.hammer.com.