A recent Webinar, titled “Making VoIP Secure, Efficient and Seamless Across Enterprise and Service Provider Networks,” broadcast at the end of March, dealt with the issue that today’s Voice over IP networks are gradually superseding circuit-switched networks for Enterprises and Service Providers.

“A wide range of hybrid networks is emerging that require interoperability of IP-based and circuit-switched network components,” said Webinar officials, adding that this may result in “complex network interconnections at the network edge. The advent of all-IP communications creates a fresh set of needs in this environment.”

Webinar moderator Erik Linask, Group Editorial Director of TMC (News - Alert), mentioned during the Webinar that VoIP is rising in popularity at a remarkably fast pace, saying that it’s such a fundamental shift that the end of the PSTN might be seen “sometime this decade.”

Presenting was James Rafferty, Product Line Director, Integrated Media Gateways for Dialogic (News - Alert). Responsible for VoIP Gateway products sold to carriers and related market strategies, he has managed a variety of VoIP, SS7 and voice products as a Senior Product Manager for Cantata and Brooktrout (News - Alert) Technology.

Rafferty discussed many topics, speaking of what he called “A Tale of Three Markets,” Carrier Trunking Gateways, Carrier SBCs and Enterprise SBCs.

Rafferty is active in the standards process through his work with the Internet Engineering Task Force and the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), and was instrumental in the development of the T.37 and T.38 IP fax standards and the Megaco/H.248 standards.

This webinar gave an overview of the changing network edge and showed how media gateways are evolving and incorporating session border control (SBC) functions. “A new generation of SBCs and Border Elements that integrate signaling, transcoding and security functions can be used to reduce cost, introduce network flexibility and enable new communication capabilities for voice and other media,” webinar officials said. The webinar will then examine key use cases for Dialogic’s BorderNet product family and how they can support any-to-any network connectivity and address emerging security requirements.

The Webinar discussed how Enterprise and Service Provider networks are evolving and connecting to support VoIP, why Media Gateways are evolving to support hybrid and pure-IP networks in the same product, how Media Gateways, Border Elements and Session Border Controllers can share duties to reduce overall network costs, how new IP communication scenarios are enabled between Enterprises and Service Providers and how to reduce CAPEX and OPEX (News - Alert) costs when implementing a hybrid network transition strategy.

Registration information can be found here.