MetaSwitch Extends VoIP Leadership Position with Class 5 Softswitch Enhancements

New software and hardware delivers order-of-magnitude increase in media gateway density in integrated or distributed softswitch architecture

 

Alameda, CA: June 15, 2004. Building on three years of field success, MetaSwitch today announced a suite of significant product enhancements to its VP3500 Series Class 5 Softswitch, designed to deliver the scalability and flexibility demanded by the world's most demanding service providers. With both a major software release and a revolutionary media gateway hardware design, MetaSwitch breaks new ground with a true VoIP Class 5 platform that cost-effectively scales from small to large networks. The result delivers carriers a viable migration path for their Class 5 infrastructure, as well as opening up new VoIP opportunities.

The MetaSwitch VP3500 starts from an industry-leading position with broadband Class 5 and next generation capabilities such as IP Centrex and Web Self-Care. Building on this, the latest product release delivers a range of system enhancements that simplify deployment and increase system scalability and flexibility.

  • MetaSwitch engineers have achieved an industry first by collapsing the media gateway functions often provided on three or four separate cards onto a single blade. The PB family of media gateway cards sports interfaces for VoIP (Gigabit Ethernet), VoATM (OC3) and TDM (DS3), together with on-board DSPs for any-to-any transcoding and echo cancellation on every channel - up to 672 concurrent calls on the PB4000 and 2,016 on the PB5000 card.
  • The VP3510 media gateway chassis retains the VP3500's proven carrier-class fully redundant passive midplane and high performance packet-switched bus architecture, while increasing total system capacity by an order of magnitude thanks to greater processor, power and cooling capabilities - all in a smaller 12U form factor. Fully configured with high capacity media gateway cards, the resultant platform provides up to 26,208 simultaneous calls per chassis. Just as importantly, low-end scalability is maintained with entry-level systems starting at under 300 lines.
  • For geographic diversity and high-end scalability, the MetaSwitch chassis can be deployed as a one-box solution, or as part of an open softswitch architecture. In a distributed network, multiple media and/or signaling gateways are managed from a centralized call agent software entity, running on a fault-tolerant pair of industry-standard servers. Up to 500,000 subscribers can be supported in this way by a single virtual switch. MetaSwitch also continues to offer an integrated solution, with the call agent software running on dual processor blades in the media gateway - an option expected to remain popular with carriers looking for rapid deployment of standalone switches.

Service providers enthusiastically welcomed MetaSwitch's latest product innovations, which were first demonstrated at the company's recent customer conference. "One of the key reasons we recently selected MetaSwitch was their vision for the evolution of our network," says Phil Robinson, Operations Manager at Western Iowa Telephone. "We have already successfully deployed the VP3500 Class 5 Softswitch as part of the first circuit to packet migration phase, and plan to leverage MetaSwitch's high-density media gateways in a distributed softswitch architecture as part of our future expansion plans."

Independent industry analysts confirm this customer feedback. "This industry has seen many vendors try and fail to deliver a true Class 5 softswitch solution," said Danny Klein, senior analyst at Yankee Group. "MetaSwitch has built a solid reputation and loyal customer base among the smaller independent and competitive carriers. These latest enhancements allow MetaSwitch to be more competitive and we expect that to translate into larger account wins."

The latest software release, VP3510 chassis and PB4000 media gateway card completed beta trials and became generally available this week. They will be demonstrated at SuperComm, both on the MetaSwitch booth (12420) and as part of the pulver.com SIPop! pavilion (booth 138401).

For an online press pack including photographs of the new chassis, please visit www.metaswitch.com/rescenter.

About MetaSwitch

MetaSwitch is the industry's leading independent broadband Class 5 softswitch vendor. Its widely deployed VP3500 Series Class 5 Softswitch supports over 100 Class 5 features including CLASS services, IP Centrex, E911, LNP, 1-800 and CALEA, and scales from a few hundred to half a million subscribers. Customers include incumbent and competitive local exchange carriers, as well as operators of broadband wireless, cable and fiber networks.

MetaSwitch is a division of established telecom technology provider Data Connection (DCL). The company is consistently profitable and privately held, with US locations in California, Virginia, Texas and Florida, and European headquarters in London, UK.

For more information, see www.metaswitch.com.