Start-up's IP phone switch extends DSL services

ROCKVILLE, MD. - Start-up Sentito Networks is coming out with a full-featured local telephone switch that will make it faster to set up DSL services, extend DSL to areas where it currently cannot reach and support services such as frame relay to the home.

Sentito's New End Office Service Switch (NSS) enables service providers to connect one set of wires to a customer's house and change the services that are delivered over them without touching the wires again.

Today, if a service provider wants to upgrade customer phone lines to DSL, a technician has to move the wires from one card on a switch to another card. With Sentito gear that change can be made by uploading software to the NSS line card to which the wires are attached. NSS has cards for two-wire connections that support phone service and DSL, and four-wire cards for T-1, channelized T-1, primary rate interface ISDN and frame relay.

For example, corporate frame relay networks could be extended to homes that are served by NSSes, making it possible to link telecommuters to frame relay networks rather than introducing new technologies such as VPNs.

"Manipulation of [wires] is eliminated, and moving wires is very expensive," says Michael Kennedy, co-founder of Network Strategy Partners, a network consultancy. NSS also reduces the time it takes to provision a new service, he says.

Because these devices can be installed in switching offices or stand alone in neighborhoods, DSL services can be extended farther from switching offices than the 18,000-foot radius DSL would otherwise support.

Free-standing remote devices called digital loop carriers exist today to extend switching offices, but they simply aggregate customer lines and trunk them back to switching offices. Sentito's NSS is a full local phone switch, commonly called a Class 5 switch. Because it's based on IP, long-term it can let carriers run voice and data over one network rather than running separate voice and data networks. In the meantime, it can switch traffic onto existing voice and data networks or onto IP networks.

NSS performs the functions of two devices found in packet voice networks - the media gateway, which translates traffic from one protocol to another, and the media gateway controller, software that sets up calls and mixes in call features such as caller ID. NSS can support 65 call features on its own and can tap into call-feature software on other Class 5 switches.

This approach is similar to that of other softswitch start-ups such as Taqua Systems and Santera Systems, Kennedy says. These companies have been around longer and have products that are shipping, while Sentito starts beta tests next month. NSS will be generally available next year.

NSS is a 14-slot chassis with 12 customer slots and two trunk slots. Pricing starts at $30,000, and the price per port is roughly comparable to that of a traditional Class 5 switch, Sentito says.

Founders of the company come from telecom equipment maker Tellabs and Salix, an early media gateway vendor that was bought by Tellabs. Tellabs dropped the Salix line of business last year.

Sentito also makes NEO SIP/SS7 Proxy, a signaling gateway, and NEO Services Manager, a management platform for Sentito gear.