Newport Expands Intop US, Releases New SBC Software

Newport Networks announced this morning it is expanding its organization with new offices in Frisco, Texas. Newport likewise announced the availability of Release 2.0 of its 1460 session border controller software.

Release 2.0 of its 1460 Session Border Controller adds geographic service resilience, link aggregation (802.3-2002) capabilities, and a series of enhancements designed to deliver carrier-class reliability, bandwidth utilization and profitability.

“Service providers now require the same predictability, reliability and profitability as the PSTN for voice and multimedia over IP,” says Terry Matthews, Chairman of Newport Networks. “It’s time for vendors to step up and help providers succeed with new packet-based services. The U.S. market is absolutely ready for a session border controller of this caliber.  Newport is here to raise the bar.”

I visited with David Vant and Steve Baechle of Newport Networks who shared some of the details that the 1460 provides:

Geographic Service Resilience:  With this latest release, the 1460 session border controller delivers true geographic resilience, safeguarding against both node and network failure. Two1460s in different locations can automatically assume traffic from one another in the event of disaster scenarios, router failure or extended power outages.  Automatic switchover of traffic is performed, avoiding service disruption and providing disaster recovery capabilities on a par with the PSTN.

Link Aggregation to Bolster Reliability:  The 1460 includes Link Aggregation (802.3-2002) functionality, commonly deployed in routers.  This optimizes the flow of traffic across 8 physical links, allowing traffic to continue to flow even in the event of a link failure, vastly improving service reliability.

Regulatory Compliance:  The 1460 solution complies with CALEA and Emergency 911 mandates.  In keeping with requirements, Lawful Intercept is performed without the end-users’ knowledge and monitored details are delivered in real-time over secure interfaces to the law enforcement agency. These features are added in such a way that call processing performance is not impacted.

VLAN Support for Premium Services:  The 1460 architecture allows service providers to establish SIP-based Virtual LANs (VLANs) between their network core and customer sites with extensive traffic policing capabilities, enabling guaranteed performance and optimal bandwidth utilization. VLAN capabilities can also be applied on the trunking side to ensure optimum physical interface utilization while policing at the VLAN level enforces peering agreements

“Policing” Profitability: The Release 2.0 software includes expanded traffic policing capabilities for regulating bandwidth across multiple customer connections. Precise media policing on a per connection basis gives providers the granular control of bandwidth utilization needed to accurately design and consistently meet Service Level Agreements (SLAs).  Meanwhile signaling policing limits the effects of signaling Denial of Service attacks on the core network.

Session Admission Control (SAC): Allows bandwidth and session type (e.g., voice, instant messaging, and video) limits to be set for corporate groups and individual users. Additionally, “Anti-tromboning” (or Media Release), for use among end-users behind a main corporate IP address, allows internal VoIP calls to take place within the corporate network with only the signaling traffic sent to the session border controller. This minimizes congestion in the public access network.

Release 2.0 of the Newport Networks 1460 session border controller will ship in the North American and international markets through third quarter 2005.