Kagoor Delivers Session Border Control Solution For Voice over Broadband

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Kagoor Delivers Session Border Control Solution For Voice over Broadband

Remember Aravox Technologies? Well I do. They were one of the first companies to offer a session border control (SBC) that solves the issue of NAT traversal over VoIP without compromising security. Basically a SBC device, is an edge device that opens and maintains a secure hole through a firewall for real-time traffic, such as voice over IP or video. These devices contain call control features such as a SIP proxy server and an H.323 gatekeeper, so that media ports can be opened and closed on a per-call basis. It also performs network address translation (NAT) from private to public networks.

Aravox had a good product but unfortunately they never made it. Alcatel swallowed up Aravox's technology in January 2003.

Well, today there are a few SBCs, such as Acme Packet, Jasomi Networks, Kagoor Networks, Netrake Corp, and NexTone Communications Inc.

Just today, Kagoor was tooting its own horn for announcing a cable customer (the only one for session border controllers, according to them), as well as a voice over broadband solution for the expanding market for VOIP via cable and xDSL.

Here's the release and then my comments below:
First Announced Customer for Session Border Controllers in Rapidly Developing Cable IP Telephony Market

TOKYO--Aug. 17, 2004-- Kagoor Networks, a leader in session border control solutions, announced today that Kintetsu Cable Network (KCN) has deployed the VoiceFlow series to deliver its cable-based IP telephony services. This is the first announced customer implementation of session border controllers in the rapidly developing cable IP telephony market.
Kagoor partnered with NEC to implement the solution for KCN. NEC is a worldwide reseller of Kagoor's VoiceFlow series. KCN plans to start delivering the IP telephony services that utilize this solution by the end of the summer.

IP telephony has attracted increasing attention in Japan because of the increased use of broadband service and the diffusion of the Internet continuous connection. However, Network Address Translation (NAT) has made it impossible to utilize VoIP between different private IP networks.
Kagoor's VoiceFlow series has been implemented by NEC to solve the NAT problem for KCN's cable network service. VoIP calls now traverse KCN's private IP network paths securely and easily. VoiceFlow also improves the efficiencies of the service operation management by completely eliminating Internet Protocol address issues.

KCN is a leading cable provider in Japan that is promoting and providing multi-channel broadcast and broadband communication service. The initial service they are introducing provides IP telephony service for apartments, which requires the high security and NAT traversal delivered by Kagoor's VoiceFlow.

"Kagoor's VoiceFlow addresses the security and NAT issues that KCN faced in rolling out its new cable IP telephony solution," said Norinao Hizen, Assistant General Manager, Network Systems Division of NEC. "NEC sees VoiceFlow as an integral part of its IP telephony portfolio and believes this is only the first of many more similar VoIP deployments."

The VoiceFlow series is a very scalable and comprehensive family of Session Border Control solutions, including high capacity, fault tolerant carrier grade (VF-3000), VoIP service provider or carrier edge (VF-1000) and CPE (VF-200). VoiceFlow is the only solution to deliver the five essential VoIP applications: Network-hosted NAT traversal and VPN aggregation, network protection, carrier peering and enterprise border control.

"Kagoor is very pleased to help KCN deliver its new, exciting cable-based IP telephony services. We think the cable VoIP market is very active and this is only the beginning," said Opher Kahane, CEO and Co-founder of Kagoor Networks. "We also value our strong relationship with NEC and plan to continue working with them on our many current and future VoIP opportunities."

This is great news that a session border control product has an actual customer - and a large one at that. I think the service providers are realizing the need to not just offer "VoIP" just like every Tom, Dick, and Harry, but they also need to secure their VoIP offering. Now when will the service providers "get" that they also need to offer QoS so VoIP customers can talk on the phone will perfect quality while streaming a video, using a P2P client, and downloading a large file?

They also have a related release which you can check out here:
Kagoor Delivers Session Border Control Solution For Voice over Broadband



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