MetaSwitch Enhances its Class 5 Softswitch

MetaSwitch
announced a series of enhancements to its VP3500 Series Class 5
Softswitch, including a major software release and a new media
gateway.




MetaSwitch's hardware design collapses media gateway functions
that typically provided on 3 or 4 separate cards onto a single
blade. The new media gateway cards offer interfaces for VoIP
(Gigabit Ethernet), VoATM (OC3) and TDM (DS3). They use on-board
DSPs for any-to-any transcoding and echo cancellation on every
channel. Two card models are available: one offers up to 672
concurrent calls (the PB4000) and the second card offers 2,016
concurrent calls (the PB5000).



The new VP3510 media gateway chassis uses the same fully
redundant passive midplane and packet-switched
bus architecture as the existing VP3500 softswitch, 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. It also offer low-end
scalability, 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.



The latest software release, VP3510 chassis and PB4000 media
gateway card completed beta trials and are now commercially
available.
http://www.metaswitch.com