www.aculab.com

Aculab offers solution providers a wide range of hardware and software for integration into high performance communications solutions - from contact centres and IVR to prepaid services. Products for use within telco or enterprise solutions include media processing resources; speech processing, fax, conferencing and echo cancellation - in both PSTN and IP environments, and digital network access including SIP and SS7. Support is available to help developers through each stage of their product’s life cycle including pre-sales consultancy, technical support, training and marketing. Aculab's portfolio ensures solution providers have the mix of capabilities required to meet the ever changing needs of the communications market.

Aculab’s head office is in Milton Keynes, UK with sales and support offices in Australia, Germany and the USA. Visit www.aculab.com to find out more.

Prosody S
Prosody S is a software only product providing core speech processing resources that run on a host PC’s CPU – eliminating the need for a dedicated digital signal processing (DSP) resource card. Prosody S operates in a voice over IP environment and is accessed via Aculab’s generic API.

Many small and medium sized businesses use ‘automatic attendant’ or IVR systems as a first point of contact for their callers. These systems typically need just a few concurrent channels, making Prosody S the ideal product to develop a software oriented solution. A similar situation often arises in large organisations where individual departments wish to present a more personalised answering system and deploy a small-scale.

IP media session software is proven technology with our IP telephony hardware and is included with Prosody S. Features include:
• SIP (and H.323) protocol support
• Adaptive jitter buffer
• RTP
• DTMF over IP packets – RFC 2833 for SIP (via User Indication for H.323)
• Voice activity detection and discontinuous transmission (DTX)
• Record termination on silence
• Two IP calls may be switched together (‘tromboned’) using the Media Point API, while A-law and µ-law coding conversions are performed if necessary between the two calls

Visit www.aculab.com to find out more.

Prosody X
Prosody X PCI is a highly configurable card that combines support for rich media processing resources, IP telephony and optional E1/T1 digital network access functions. Unrivalled benchmarks in density and price paves the way to a new era in communications building block technology. The product leverages Aculab’s core expertise in combining complex technologies into a powerful and flexible proposition that assures developers a simple, clear migration path. Prosody X offers ‘mix and match’ modules to scale a wide range of applications including low and high densities suitable for enterprise and public networks.

The Prosody X media processing resource card offers a comprehensive selection of firmware algorithms that can run independently on its DSPs as well as the option of adding a primary rate trunk module, ensuring our customers’ market leading position is maintained. Up to 4 DSPs can be selected to run the algorithms and with each DSP capable of supporting up to 150 channels, a total of 600 channels per card are achievable. Key media processing resources include record and playback with a range of compressions, DTMF tone generation and detection, matrix conferencing, echo cancellation, fax processing and data transmission protocols.

At the heart of Prosody X is an Ethernet switch in addition to the TDM matrix used by previous generations of Prosody. This change acknowledges and accommodates for the relentless shift toward an IP based communications transport infrastructure – particularly SIP - and the benefits this can bring. The on-board IP architecture enables Prosody X to be distributable amongst different chassis platforms offering resilience and scalability as well as helping future proof solutions as they move to IP. A dual redundant 10/100 BASE-T Ethernet interface provides the external IP connection, while the host’s PCI bus will view Prosody X as if it were a NIC.

Visit www.aculab.com to find out more.

SS7 software

Aculab offers SS7 as part of its extensive range of telecom protocols – allowing users to connect switching, media processing and signalling platforms directly to a carrier’s network.

The implementation of Aculab's SS7 is intended to assist developers and integrators designing value-added solutions for public telephony networks. These may range from complex protocol conversion solutions, to network-based messaging applications, prepaid calling card platforms and other IN/AIN revenue generating services.

The SS7 protocol is suitable for worldwide deployment, with the ISUP products being based on ITU-T International ISUP (compatible with most national variants of ITU-T ISUP) and offering support for other national and international variants, including ANSI and China. Similarly, TCAP, SCCP, MTP3 and MTP2 support conforms to the relevant ITU-T, ANSI and China protocols.

The SS7 product supports MTP, ISUP, SCCP and TCAP protocols and the software is available under a cost free licence, for use with Aculab’s range of cPCI, PCI and PCIe cards, many of which are combined with media processing resources to bring tremendous value for developers and systems integrators.

The software supports an unrestricted number of E1/T1 bearer circuits and up to 128 signalling links (F-links or A-links). Redundancy at link, card and system level is supported by dual resilient MTP3 for high availability solutions. Support for ISUP and TCAP systems across remote, distributed nodes, sharing a single point code, is also offered.

Visit www.aculab.com to find out more.

SS7 signalling monitor

Aculab’s SS7 signalling monitor is a software option that can be used in conjunction with Aculab’s enabling technology hardware and SS7 software, to produce sophisticated monitoring and data capture applications for use in SS7 networks.

The SS7 signalling monitor provides developers with a powerful means of creating a variety of critical applications to increase ARPU, improve customer satisfaction and meet lawful intercept obligations. Products can be created to capture, filter and record network traffic for analysis, to help manage and optimise fixed and mobile (wireless) networks, to aid management of mobile roaming and billing, and for statutory surveillance purposes.

Usefully, protocol variants (e.g., ITU-T, ANSI, China ISUP) are configurable on a per link basis, and traffic from multiple signalling links can be merged into a single TCP/IP connection to an application.

The SS7 signalling monitor software can be used with any Aculab card fitted with a PMXC module or having on-board trunk connections and an appropriate signalling DSP. Configurations are available to enable the dynamic capture and monitoring of signalling information in up to 64 bi-directional links, carried within up to 8 software selectable E1/T1 trunks, per card. Multiple cards can be used for distributed, scalable, high density traffic monitoring, filtering, analysis and recording systems.

The monitor API follows Aculab’s consistent approach and can co-exist with SS7 signalling APIs (ISUP and TCAP), as well as the Prosody X API when enhanced applications, such as recording of speech bearer traffic, are needed. Additionally, ISDN or CAS protocols can be used in parallel with the monitor, which means the legal intercept standard format for delivery of data to law enforcement agencies can be readily met.

Visit www.aculab.com to find out more.

GroomerII
GroomerII offers a cost-effective, single platform solution for network operators, alternative carriers, service providers, telephone equipment manufacturers (TEMs), systems integrators and enterprises who are seeking more than just a signalling and media gateway for routing between TDM and IP networks.

GroomerII enables interconnection and protocol conversion between most of the world’s ISDN networks, SS7 (ITU-T ISUP), SIP (RFC3261), and a rich legacy of channel associated signalling (CAS) and R2 derivatives.

As a stand alone, integrated appliance, GroomerII provides users with enormous flexibility, including many routing and billing features otherwise available only by using a separate softswitch or media gateway controller.  Features include the simultaneous use of multiple protocols in the same platform, and conversions between any of the wide range of supported protocols. Users who need to support protocol conversions and complex routing applications between a variety of incompatible networks – both TDM and SIP – have the ideal choice in Aculab’s GroomerII.

Visit www.aculab.com to find out more.

Whitepapers

  The Aculab SIP Bridge - For third party call control

 The question of return on investment (ROI) of VoIP

 On-board IP architecture - a new approach to computer telephony card design