The Commetrex Outlook | November 2012

Smart FoIP Wins Best Of Show

Our focus at the past few ITEXPOs has been Smart FoIP, and this year the product won the Best Service Provider Solution award, primarily because it solves such a significant problem for nearly every ITSP. Smart FoIP overcomes two of the major problems that cause FoIP to be the source of such a large number of trouble tickets that service providers often simply give up on FoIP and recommend to their customers that they keep their POTS lines for fax. But this “solution” complicates the customer’s telecom infrastructure and adds significantly to cost. The industry needs a real solution to this problem and Smart FoIP provides it.

Of course, many ITSPs just need a better understanding of the nature of the problems involved in FoIP. After all, fax is much more complicated than voice and requires more testing and planning, but there are also systemic problems with FoIP in SIP networks that must be solved. One problem has to do with the transition from G.711 pass-through — essentially voice mode-and T.38, the preferred fax mode. Only Smart FoIP solves this problem. The other problem occurs when an FoIP call remains in G.711 mode, and usually shows up on multi-page faxes. Smart FoIP solves that problem too. Depending on the network, Smart FoIP in a server or gateway can improve fax completion rates by up to 10%.

You can gain the improved customer satisfaction and reduced support costs with Smart ATA from NetGen Communications, or with Commetrex’ BladeWare telephony platform with PowerFax. For more information, please contact us at sales@commetrex.com or 770-449-7775 (press 1).

Making FoIP Work

With the number of ITSPs purchasing Smart ATA so they can stop saying to their customers, “Keep your POTS for fax,” NetGen has many new customers that have never had success with FoIP. It’s all new to them. This translates into plenty of time spent by our support team working with them to help these FoIP newcomers work out their FoIP network problems. Chief among these problems are understanding and solving firewall problems. But with Smart ATA and our knowledgeable guys, we’ll have that one licked in no time. Then there’s configuring the proxy function. And, of course, there is working with their carrier partners to qualify FoIP routes. No other vendor has the experience solving these problems as does NetGen Communications. And, if you are a Smart ATA customer, you get the full benefit of Smart ATA combined with this experience.

We will have you up and running in no time. Make us prove it — go to NetGenCommunications.com and order a unit for evaluation.

Cloud Ready? When Is A Platform Cloud Ready?

So, what does it mean for a server to be cloud-ready? Well, that depends on the application. In the case of Commetrex’ BladeWare, it means that, at a minimum, the platform must be robust and capable of handling heavy loads, otherwise, nothing else matters. But it goes well beyond that.

BladeWare is a telephony platform widely deployed in hosted- and premises-based fax applications, including enterprise fax servers and hosted fax-to-email and email-to-fax. But, for the Cloud, the requirements go well beyond the core media functions since cloud or hosted applications have a way of magnifying requirements. So, instead of 4-24-port systems you find 100-200-port systems. And, instead of a simple operator interface, cloud-based applications put a heavy emphasis on manageability, serviceability, scalability, and flexible metering/accounting, so subscribers can be accurately billed. BladeWare is currently undergoing a major upgrade in its administration facility to better address these requirements.

BladeWare’s admin facility is responsible for bringing BladeWare’s distributed processes into and out of execution and managing their operational level from configurable (level 1) to applications taking calls (level 5). In addition, the admin implements the system’s configuration management, fault management, security management, and accounting. Of course, all this is done remotely via a Web browser or an SNMP client. There is also an open interface, allowing OEMs to add their proprietary interface.

With BladeWare, serviceability means that optional entities can be brought in and out of service without disturbing the balance of the system, supporting both graceful and immediate shutdown. It also means dynamic system configurability, operational monitoring, and self diagnostics.

Scalability means being able to increase the system capacity without taking the system down. This is a simple configuration change as long as the compute resources of the host aren’t exceeded. But, because of the system’s distributed architecture, call capacity can be seamlessly increased simply by adding more computers. In blade-based systems, which is where we got the name BladeWare, this means just sliding in another board.

For metering and status monitoring, BladeWare uses the admin facility’s ability to monitor the statistics collected by each process, such as the SIP service manager and the fax resource controller. There is also a client-application API that allows the user’s billing application to query the processes directly.

Want to know more about BladeWare? Drop us a note at sales@commetrex.com.

Save The Date For ITEXPO East 2013

We’ve had so much success — not to mention fun — at the ITEXPO shows, that we just can’t miss one. We’re already looking forward to ITEXPO East 2013 in Miami Beach, January 29 – February 1, 2013. This conference and expo has become the best way for telecom professionals to catch up with what’s happening in our industry and to form the personal relationships so helpful in building productive business partnerships. We hope you’ll be there.

If you need info on the show or to register, the show’s website has all the info you need.