CommWorks IP solution crosses 2b minutes of voice traffic

Mt Prospect,

CommWorks Corporation announced that the Internet protocol (IP) telephony equipment from the company has carried some two billion minutes of voice traffic for service providers around the world. Carriers in North America, Europe and Asia are using CommWorks media gateways and software platforms to offload voice traffic from the circuit-switched Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) to more efficient IP networks and to introduce new and enhanced telephony services to their customers.

The two billion minute-mark was surpassed in 14 months, that is, April 1 through May 31, 2001. CommWorks equipment surpassed the one billion minute-mark in January 2001, and reached its second billion in the span of four months. CommWorks IP telephony hardware and software deployed around the world is currently carrying more than 310 million minutes of voice traffic per month.

"The fact that some of the world's leading telecom providers continue to add more voice traffic to their IP infrastructures is testament to the robust nature of the CommWorks IP telephony system," said Houman Modarres, Director (Softswitch and IP telephony product management), CommWorks Corporation. "We are allowing service providers to grow their revenue streams source by enabling them to deliver new services like unified messaging, IP Centrex and fax-over-IP."

Softswitch at CommWorks Architecture 

The CommWorks IP telephony solution is based on a three-tier architecture of media gateways, signaling and call control and network management and back-end servers interconnected by open standards-based protocols. This flexible, carrier-class solution allows service providers to scale their infrastructure and deploy next-generation, enhanced services. 

At the heart of this architecture is the CommWorks softswitch framework. The softswitch is responsible for several critical functions, including:

• Intelligent call handling between media gateways for a diverse array
  
  of access media and a multiplicity of fixed and mobile end points

• Call processing

• Integrating signaling with the existing Signaling System 7 (SS7)
  
  infrastructure

• Coordinating with databases and back-end servers to properly route
  
  calls and distribute functions to other network elements

• Supporting critical network functions like provisioning, fault
  
  tolerance and billing

• Interfacing with application servers, feature servers and media servers to enable a wide array of new revenue generating services.

The first layer of the three-tier architecture, featuring the Total Control 1000 and Total Control 2000 platforms, performs media gateway functions to integrated multiple traffic types and accommodate disparate networks. The CommWorks softswitch works together with these multiservice access platforms to provide complete, carrier-grade IP-based communications. 

The softswitch operates in layers two and three of the CommWorks architecture. At layer two, it provides media control and management,

session control functions and multi-protocol PSTN/IP signaling. At layer three, the softswitch is responsible for critical network services,

including accounting, authentication and rating, billing support, directory mapping, and Web provisioning.