Network SANDi Takes on the CO

Network SANDi from Sound Advantage (Irvine, CA - 949-476-1400) is the enhanced services spin-off of the famous voice-directed automatic call distributor. Network SANDi is a carrier-grade, voice-enabled, natural-language unified messaging system. It replaces, or works with, the separate messaging systems that many carriers have in place. Sound Advantage has successfully completed acceptance testing of Network SANDi with a 5ESS central office switch at Lucent's LiveNet facility.

Like its CPE counterpart, Network SANDi routes and returns phone calls, retrieves and responds to voicemail, provides voice web access, maintains internal phone extension lists, voice-activates email, handles faxes, and manages CRM databases. Lucent's Speech Server is the platform for Sound Advantage's network offering, and supports ASR and TTS in multiple languages.

Network SANDi is priced at $1,500 to $2,000 per port, and is available now.

Enter 300 at www.cConvergence.com/productinfo

DCOSS from GL Communications

The Digital Central Office Switch Simulator & Bulk Call Generator (happily abbreviated to DCOSS) from GL Communications Inc. (Gaithersburg, MD - 301-670-4784) converts almost any Pentium PC (portable, tower, rackmount) into a digital CO simulator, PBX and full-fledged Class 5 switch, complete with T1/E1 SS7, and ISDN-PRI/BRI, and POTS interfaces.

DCOSS represents the simulation end of GL's PC-Based T1/E1/T3 test, analysis, and simulation equipment. Unlike GL's analysis equipment, which has been available for the past twelve years, the original DCOSS made its appearance only about three years ago but became an immediate hit with companies such as Tellabs/Salix, Cisco, Nortel, ECTel, Clarent, Broadcom, Qwest, 3Com and many others.

Many customers take a DCOSS and install GL Communications' Ultra T1, E1 or T3 analysis boards in the same PC to extend DCOSS functionality.

Vijay R. Kulkami, principal, and Robert Bichefsky, senior manager, of GL Communications came to our East Coast Labs with a PC containing some NMS Communications boards and DCOSS software, and spent hours demonstrating an incredible number of features.

DCOSS runs under Windows NT 4.0 and boasts an extremely user-friendly graphical interface. Recently, the system has been upgraded from handling eight trunks (T1s, or E1s, or a combination of both) to 16.

Each DCOSS board may be configured for a different protocol type. Protocol support includes SS7, SS5, T1 ISDN and E1 ISDN, and R1 (robbed bit) Multi-Frequency Control (MFC) signaling, and 18 flavors of Multi-Frequency Control R2 (MFC-R2).

DCOSS's System Status screen displays all configuration information globally, per digital board, per digital trunk, and per timeslot. This is a particularly useful screen, as it helps to discern why a call performed in a certain way.

Hourly call stats are shown for all timeslots, and per trunk and per system.

The Bulk Calling capabilities now include Sync Calling, which synchronizes all outgoing calls whatever the duration of each individual call. Bulk Calling can be initiated for individual timeslots as well as individual trunks. Thus, you can now start additional Bulk Call tests without interrupting the one currently running.

It's difficult to do anything stupid while writing a bulk call script, since the context-based software lets you type in only allowable commands at certain critical points.

Scripting may be combined with Bulk Call Generation configurations and Bulk Call Reception configurations. Optional software permits client/server remote access from a LAN, WAN - even over the Internet.

DCOSS' extensive fax support includes 96-port V.90 modem capability. A quad E1 package with costs about $17,900 (be sure your PC has a full-length PCI slot).

Enter 301 at www.cConvergence.com/productinfo

Microsoft, Intel Partner for Wireless Multimedia

Microsoft (Redmond, WA - 425-882-8080) and Intel (Santa Clara, CA - 408-765-8080) will collaborate to optimize Microsoft Windows Media Audio and Video, and digital rights management (DRM) technology for the Intel XScale microarchitecture using the Intel Integrated Performance Primitives (IPP). The Microsoft/Intel collaboration is expected to help creators of 2.5G and 3G wireless devices accelerate the delivery of richer digital media services.

As wireless networks are upgraded for 2.5G and 3G, delivery of high-speed, two-way data with new Internet-based multimedia services will emerge. Consumers will be able to send and receive personal digital audio and video, and download and stream digital music, Internet radio or short-subject videos such as movie trailers, news clips, financial information and weather reports.

Windows Media will be optimized for Intel's processors by incorporating Intel IPP, a set of highly tuned software primitives for the development of advanced multimedia applications. Intel IPP consists of prewritten functions for math, image, speech, audio and video processing. Intel IPP accesses the advanced capabilities of each Intel processor through highly optimized assembly language routines. Also, it can reduce battery consumption in mobile devices through shorter execution times.

In addition, Microsoft and Intel will utilize the Intel IPPs to optimize Windows Media for the Intel StrongARM SA-1110 and the Intel Pentium 4 processor.

Windows Media Audio 8, released in March 2001, achieves near-CD-quality music at 48 Kbps, or just over one-third the speed of an MP3 file at 128 Kbps. Windows Media Video 8, also released in March 2001, offers high-quality video in a file or bandwidth nearly 50% smaller than other video compression technologies. This is well-suited for the GPRS networks being built in Europe, Asia and the U.S., as well as networks upgraded to 3G standards.

Enter 302 at www.cConvergence.com/productinfo

CommWorks Routers Support IPv6

CommWorks (Mount Prospect, IL - 847-262-5000) is adding support for IP Version 6 (IPv6) to its Total Control 100 gigabit routers. The routers will handle native IPv6 over a 2.4Gbps (OC-48c) line interface.

The adoption of IPv6 is being driven by the dwindling number of available addresses for IPv4 and the proliferation of Internet-enabled devices. IPv6 increases the address space from 32 to 128 bits.