Cisco in the Commetrex T.38 Interop Lab

For Immediate Release

Roswell, GA, September 3, 2002 – Cisco and Commetrex have completed T.38 interoperability testing on the Cisco AS5350 in Commetrex’ T.38 Interoperability Lab. The results of the 16-point test are posted on Commetrex’ T.38 Interoperability Lab Web site (see link at http://www.commetrex .com.) The Cisco AS5350 Universal Gateway was found to be interoperable.

Mike Wells, the Lab’s lead engineer, remarked: “We expected testing with Cisco to be smooth. With Cisco’s market position, it is no coincidence that the first gateway an early customer of our TerminatingT38 product tested with, was a Cisco gateway. But we looked forward to Interop testing directly with Cisco in order to perform the in-depth testing only possible when the testing is between the two manufacturers.”

In January 2002, Commetrex announced the opening of its T.38 Interoperability Lab, which offers no-fee interop testing to any vendor with a fielded T.38-capable gateway. Since then, 12 companies have signed up for testing, five are currently in the process, and four are complete, as indicated on the Web site.

Testing is done entirely over the public Internet, eliminating the need for on-site testing. Commetrex’ TerminatingT38™ is used to send faxes through the participant's gateway. Trace and debugging logs are frequently run with continual analysis by a senior engineer until all faxes sent are clean and differences in T.38 implementation completely understood. Testing engineers analyze sessions and timing, noting any interoperability problems or other potential problems that might be in violation of basic ITU T.38 standards.

“We believe we are providing a valuable service to the industry,” remarked Cliff Schornak, Commetrex’ CTO. “With Commetrex serving as a central interop clearing house for T.38, each of our testing partners is able to leverage the results of all previous tests. And, we remain in contact with them so that if we discover an interoperability issue we can go back to them with the new information. Plus, it's posted on the T.38 Interop Forum, which we are offering as an industry resource.”

Commetrex Corporation
Commetrex Corporation, known for its innovations in fax technology, has recently developed the open-communications industry’s first platform for system development that supports the industry’s two primary standards for open-system environments: the MSP Consortium M.100 software environment for media integration and the ECTF S.100 software environment for application integration. Both products are available with the company’s MSP Media Gateway product line featuring the Texas Instruments TMS320C6000 family of DSPs. The MSP Media Gateway products support voice, fax, high-speed data, VoIP, and FoIP. Commetrex also extends its support of the communications system developer to the media-processing algorithm level, and is an active participant in Texas Instrument’s Third Party Developer Network.