Telesoft Technologies' STM-1 OC-3 PCI-Express Card

In next gen networks, media processing is both big business and a big chore, particularly when service providers and network operators discover that they must deliver high broadband-based applications to tens of thousands (or more) of their subscribers.

Conventional computing platforms based on old ISA and PCI Time-Division Multiplexed (TDM) busses with their small number of time slots are not quite up to the task of serving high density systems with their many media channels. How do 21 different boards communicate among themselves in a rackmount at high speed, with perhaps each board running under a different operating system? That’s why switched fabrics were developed, an interconnected network of high-speed, point-to-point links connecting switching or other devices based on a serial or pseudoserial signaling technique such as PCI-Express (PCIe), InfiniBand, RapidIO (News - Alert), and so forth. The fabric contains many input and output ports, and the fabric is a fast, concurrent and transparent mechanism to transport data from inputs to outputs.

Recently, Telesoft Technologies (News - Alert) (www.telesoft-technologies.com) announced the MPAC 3250 PCIe STM-1/OC-3 media card, the first on market with a High-Speed Optical STM-1/OC-3 Interface in a PCI-Express Low Profile form factor.

Originally called Arapahoe, then 3GIO, PCI-Express, Intel’s (News - Alert) high-capacity switched fabric architecture, was the planned successor to the PCI bus found in most PCs.

Telesoft’s MPAC 3250 has an optical interface, running at 155 Mbps, able to service up to 2,016 channels of media (equivalent of 63 E1s) simultaneously. This makes it suitable for telephony applications that demand a high density of media channels such as network ringtones, high-capacity IVR and media platforms interfacing into the telephony network.

The gigabit Ethernet Interface allows streaming of media files from/to a remote host system via RTP (Real-Time Protocol), making it useful for media gateway applications, while a dual E1/T1 interface allows for low-bandwidth telephony connectivity such as signaling applications.

The MPAC 3250 is a low-profile, single-lane PCIe board, half the height and half the length of a traditional PCI board, that fits into any PCIe chassis. With both STM-1 and IP interfaces coexisting in such a low-profile PCIe card, the MPAC 3250 telephony board will no doubt make its mark as a very powerful media card. It is capable of supporting deployment of fixed, mobile and IP telephony applications cost-effectively, using commonly available PCI Express based servers. IT

Richard “Zippy” Grigonis is Executive Editor of TMC’s (News - Alert) IP Communications Group.

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