Kagoor Networks Inc. last week announced several new and enhanced voice-over-IP traffic-management products and applications aimed at facilitating enterprise-to-carrier VoIP networking.
The new offerings address security; network address translation (NAT); VoIP firewall and firewall traversal; service-level agreement (SLA) reporting; and monitoring, remote management and configuration of VoIP endpoints. The products extend Kagoor’s VoiceFlow traffic processing and management line, which supports major VoIP protocols – Session Initiation Protocol, H.323, Media Gateway Control Protocol and MegaCo – and is compatible to popular VoIP network and endpoint equipment, the company says.
The applications and products are:
— Extensions to VoiceFlow traffic-engineering and aggregation devices to address security, management and quality-of-service (QoS) at the enterprise and carrier demarcation point.
— Firewall/NAT, call admission control, advanced call/services support and SLA monitoring applications.
— A network-based IP Centrex deployment application that eliminates the need for customer premises equipment.
— Two VoiceFlow products: the VoiceFlow 200, a low-end enterprise product for small and midsize businesses; and the VoiceFlow 3000, a high-end, Gigabit Ethernet-based traffic-management system for service providers and carriers addressing the small office/home office and residential markets.
Kagoor found that the overriding challenges of carriers about enterprise-to-carrier VoIP peering and demarcation have been with functionality gaps in QoS assurance; NAT; admission control and SLA reporting; and the prohibitive cost and complexity of VoIP deployments.
Solving these demarcation issues lets service providers/carriers interconnect public VoIP networks with private VoIP enterprise networks, the company says.
Kagoor rolled out its first VoIP traffic manager, the VoiceFlow 1000, in June 2001. Carrier ITXC has deployed this product with a number of its affiliates and Kagoor says the carrier is realizing more than 50 per cent bandwidth savings and longer call-holding times for VoIP calls.