Business Phone Systems: VOIP PBX, Hosted PBX, Virtual PBX.

Skype’s service crashed last Thursday, leaving its customers without phone service for 2 days. The diruption has been attributed to the downloading of patches through Windows Update, which resulted in massive numbers of computers being restarted within a short timeframe. The number of offline computers allegedly caused a flood of log in requests and a lack of network resources to support services.

Further, Skype has said that it has detected a software bug within its network resource allocation algorithm that prevented the service’s self healing mechanism to withstand the computer restarts. The statement went on to say that service interruptions related to technology and communications services are common. In other words, reliability was a 90s thing.

Skype’s service is back up, but the outage is yet another blow to consumer confidence in VoIP, which has taken a beating recently with the Vonage patent issue and the downfall of Sunrocket. Cable may be the beneficiary of bad news, as the industry aggressively pushes bundled services, avoiding the term “VoIP” and its many synonyms.

Comments(0)

Enterasys (I’m not saying anything about the company name) has introduced Secure Open Convergence, a suite of security solutions for enterprise VoIP users. The technology employs the vendor’s Dragon and NAC applications as well as security rich interfaces for switching, routing, and wireless connectivity.

Dragon provides intrusion detection and a prevention system for H.323 and SIP networks. NAC assesses, authenticates, and authorizes user and device access on the network. When connected, role-based polices are enforced. NAC also supports e911 and CALEA.

In addition to the application security, embedded policy-based security features are on every interface and device on the enterprise network, protecting the network from denial of service, man in the middle and spoofing attacks.

Secure Open Convergence works with enterprise networks from 3Com, Alcatel, Avaya, Cisco, Mitel, NEC, Nortel, Panasonic, Polycom, Shoretel, and Siemens. Asterisk-based systems are also supported.

Beyond security, Enterasys provides VoWiFi (RoamAbout) and management (NetSight) solutions.

Comments(0)

NetQoS (not NetIQ) has enhanced its Performance Center by adding call setup and call quality metrics.

Other system features include end to end performance monitoring, traffic analysis, and device performance management with IP SLA reporting.

Performance Center is available for $29,500.

Comments(0)

Edgewater Networks has introduced Edgemarc 4500 and 4500T4, two new VoIP VPN routers designed to connect branch offices to a company’s headquarters. Both access routers feature 4 x 10/100 Mbps Ethernet switches, 1 x 10/100 Mbps Ethernet WAN as well as support for 8, 16, or 24 concurrent, encrypted VoIP calls.

Security for the routers is provided via a stateful packet inspection firewall and IPSec encryption. Bandwidth management is handled through voice traffic prioritization technology and traffic shaping. For monitoring and troubleshooting, Edgewater’s VPN provides voice quality measurements such as MOS, alerts, jitter, packet loss, and average packet loss burst. Further management is available through the vendor’s EdgeView troubleshooting tool.

Comments(0)

Research in China has released China VoIP Market Report 2006-2007, a 185 page report on the progress of the VoIP market in China. The firm finds that VoIP represented 43.16% of long distance calls in September 2006 and that most long distance calls originating in China, including both the PSTN and mobile, would be VoIP within the next 2 to 3 years.

The firm forecasts robust growth for VoIP. In enterprise VoIP equipment alone, the CAGR is projected to be 48% over the next five years. Revenues from this sector are expected to exceed RMB/CNY 4.2 billion or US$ 5.53 billion in 2009. The growth is attributed to softening regulations along with overall increased deployments of VoIP.

Cisco and Avaya have been identified as the market leaders.

Research in China has reported 550 million minutes of illegal VoIP international call volume generating revenues of more than RMB/CNY $490 million or US$64.6 million.

The report is available from ReportLinker for US$ 2,588. Expect the report to be in broken English.

Comments(0)