The question is when these network operators -- faced with spending freezes and deployment delays -- will be ready to introduce such services en masse.
The SnowShore N20 media server, in betas this quarter and generally available next quarter, offers unparalleled scalability and performance, boasting support for 500 to 20,000 IP full duplex voice sessions in a 10U unit (four to a rack) and in-box latency of less than 5 milliseconds, says CEO Joel Hughes.
It also can handle integration of dynamic web content. That means in addition to standard value-added services like voice mail and conferencing, the N20 can fetch and process web-based content like RealAudio feeds and MP3 files and integrate that into a given application.
Media servers are a hot new product category, says Tom Jenkins, a vice president at consulting firm TeleChoice Inc. It makes sense to move processing from an application server, which hosts the actual application software, or softswitch, which does IP-to-PSTN packet conversions, to a media server that can focus on that specific task, he says.
Other players in the media server arena include Convedia Corp., IP Unity Inc. and ThinkEngine Networks Inc. Although SnowShore is one of the later vendors to market with a media server, Jenkins says that shouldn't be a significant barrier for the company since networks today are not ready to scale "to millions and millions of users" from a technological or market standpoint. He says application servers and softswitches are so new, he's not sure they are ready to scale themselves. Deb Mielke principal at consulting firm Treillage Network Strategies Inc., agrees: "I think that like the softswitch market, it will take some time to develop."
At the same time, the downturn in the telecom market has led many service providers to scale back network buildouts, so many won't have the need for new large-volume processing engines in the near future, says Jenkins.
"It's a much-needed device, but it's very early," he says. Jenkins expects voice ASPs and large network operators like Williams Communications, the Bells and large IP telephony providers to be the first to trial such high-end media servers.
Clarification
In the October 15 issue feature on ultra-long-haul optics, Nortel Networks Ltd., Lucent Technologies and Alcatel were named as customers of the forward-error-correction (FEC) technology supplied by Multilink Technology Corp. While these firms are Multilink customers, they are not necessarily buyers of the FEC system.
