WaveSmith Networks Inc. (www.wavesmithnetworks.com) today unveils its architecture for a multiservice edge switch. Unlike ATM switches on the market, WaveSmith says its product will be more flexible at the core and will be able to handle both traditional services carriers today see as key revenue lines, such as TDM, frame relay and ATM, as well as newer, IP services.
Differentiators of the architecture include its Open Call Model, scalability, reliability and size, according to the company.
The Open Call Model (OCM) brings the concept of service mediation to data networks, which allows the native signaling techniques of various technologies to control connections across the multiservice distribution network. Also part of OCM is the ability to tie into carrier’s existing network management systems. The Open Call Model can allow different groups within a service provider to provision their own services via their own interfaces. The switch will include private network to network interfaces, MPLS, MGCP and SIP, Corba and other protocols. Some competitors’ switches require a conversion from Corba to SNMP or other protocols to handle provisioning.
WaveSmith’s product will stand out from ATM switches on the market in that it will be high speed serial at its core and scale up with an optical backplane. The central fabric is common whether switching IP or ATM.
And, unlike some other vendors that focus on hardware only for reliability, WaveSmith’s switch will also have an operating system that is extremely fault tolerant, the company says, so a service provider can do in-service upgrades and downgrades without dropping calls, patch subsystems on the fly, and do other non-disruptive management and maintenance.
“Traditionally data products focused on hot swappable hardware, we have that and hot swappable software,” says Bob Dalias, WaveSmith’s president and CEO. “If you offer SLAs, that’s very important.”
Chad Dunn, the company’s director of project management, adds that the product – which is 3.5 inches tall and offers 7.5 gigabits of capacity per vertical inch of rack space – also has a much smaller form factor that competing products.
The company expects to unveil the switch itself this June at SUPERCOMM in Atlanta and expects to be in field and lab trials at that time. Commercial availability of the switch is slated for end of this year, with ATM capability out first and then frame relay and IP added later.
