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Function over
form
By Tim McElligott
Had there been a NXTcomm in, say, 380 B.C.E., one of the panelists in
the last session of the last day, third in line to give his
presentation
to a sparse crowd of hung-over Westerners and eager, bright-eyed
Easterners, would likely have been a gadfly named Plato. And when it
was
his turn to speak, he would have risen from his klismos, forsaken his
notes and PowerPoint presentation and forcefully extolled the virtues
of
form.
Form was his thing. Because everything in the material world, according
to Plato, was merely a representation of reality that took on the form
of its counterpoint in the real world, form always trumped function.
A chair, or klismos, didn't have to be any good. It didn't have to be
comfortable. It just had to have enough form and definition to be
recognized as a chair. I'm not sure what Plato would have to say if he
were asked to speak at NXTcomm in Chicago this month--provided he could
pull off the trick of that famous philosopher that followed him by 300
years and rise from the dead--but I'll bet he would just choose to sit
down and shut up.
Form, now known as the form factor, is not quite as important these
days. That's primarily because it keeps changing, as you can see in the
story below. The elements in a next-generation network bear no
resemblance to the network that preceded it, yet the function of the
network is the same: connect people and computers that want to
communicate.
So a Platonic theory of form becomes as outdated as the flowing robes
Plato wore 2300 years ago--well, outdated in most parts of the world.
That's why drawings of networks--from either CAD systems or dinner
napkins--show boxes and boxes of what we call "functional elements."
Function trumps form in the telecom network. Form just saves
money--when
it's the right one.
E-mail me at tmcelligott@telephonyonline.com.
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By Tim McElligott
It was June 2003 in Atlanta when Howard Bubb, vice president and
general
manager of Intel's network processing group, was evangelizing about
modularity and throwing his company's considerable weight behind the
emerging Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture (AdvancedTCA or ATCA).
In April 2005, Bubb stepped down. In June last year, Intel sold its
communications and application processor business--an important driver
behind its support for ATCA. In 10 days, NXTcomm 2007 throws open its
doors at Chicago's McCormick Place, and the big question will be: Where
does that leave ATCA?...
Read more of this feature
|
Book
time with Kontron @ NXTcomm to experience first hand how Kontron Open
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IPTV and IMS network architectures that require dedicated QoS
(Quality
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Caribbean broadband wireless operator Onemax has selected
softswitch
and media gateway vendor Veraz Networks for deployment of an IP
multimedia subsystem-over-WiMAX solution...
Read more of this story
|
PICMG, the industry group focused on peripheral interconnection
specifications for communications hardware, will be hosting a PICMG
Technologies Showcase at NXTcomm 2007 later this month, the association
said...
Read more of this
story
|
A Dallas software company announced a new network element, designed
to help service providers offer existing and new services over multiple
access networks, in advance of IP multimedia subsystem (IMS)
deployment...
Read more of this story
|
Service providers, cable operators and their network product
providers share a common goal of reducing customer downtime, support
costs, and building customer loyalty. Traditionally, there has been
limited visibility into attack surfaces, and security or robustness
metrics for all IP-based products let alone those involved with the
implementation of IP multimedia subsystem (IMS)...
Read more of this story
|
The quest for the killer app for IP multimedia subsystem, or IMS,
continues at a feverish pace these days, fueled by successes in the Web
applications space from companies such as YouTube...
Read more of this story
|
MicroTCA is the latest generation of open-architecture platforms
developed for telecom equipment design. The first telecom platform,
AdvancedTCA, combined a hot-swappable, multi-protocol switched fabric
backplane with large form-factor cards and a high power capability to
allow the creation of high-density, high-performance telecom systems...
Read more of this
story
|
By Tim McElligott
It was June 2003 in Atlanta when Howard Bubb, vice president and
general
manager of Intel's network processing group, was evangelizing about
modularity and throwing his company's considerable weight behind the
emerging Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture (AdvancedTCA or ATCA.)
In April 2005, Bubb stepped down. In June last year, Intel sold its
communications and application processor business--an important driver
behind its support for ATCA. In 10 days, NXTcomm 2007 throws open its
doors at Chicago's McCormick Place, and the big question will be: Where
does that leave ATCA?
Well, it certainly won't be the biggest question, but it is one of
those
questions that people begin to ask as an event develops, as they walk
around the trade show floor and listen for what's next--thus the name
NXTcomm--and realize they aren't hearing as much about what they heard
last year and the year before.
Chances are, those who are listening will still hear plenty about ATCA.
The technology still has a big proponent in Motorola, who just this
week
announced a distribution agreement with Dragon Technology Distribution
to meet increasing demand for open, standards-based AdvancedTCA and
MicroTCA-based products in China. There also will be a PICMG
Technologies Showcase (booth 4257) that will feature member companies
of
the PICMG consortium demonstrating products based on ATCA and other
specifications.
Certainly, you'll be hearing more from companies such as Kontron, a
PICMG member that launched a new ATCA processor platform at the event
last year. But then again, we haven't hear a peep from Aviva Networks
since it came out of stealth mode at last year's event and made a big
splash with its 10 Gb/s ATCA-based processor cards. The company is not
on the exhibitor list and hasn't had a press release since last year.
Both companies are--or were--Intel-based.
Dialogic, a provider of board-level media processing and signaling
solutions, once owned by Intel, will be introducing a new multimedia
platform this month at NXTcomm that is built on a blade for the ATCA
architecture. Although the company also chooses not to focus on another
much-hyped trend over the last couple of years, namely IMS, the new
platform will be IMS ready.
"IMS isn't being adopted nearly as fast as the people who wrote the
spec
thought it would," said Bill Bryant, director or marketing for
Dialogic.
"But this product is as IMS-compliant today as you will find in the
market, and we will grow into the IMS spec as the rest of the network
does--if it goes that way."
The official name of Dialogic's new card is the SS7AM1 Mezzanine Card.
It will connect to TDM-based networks as well as those based on IP, and
it supports a variety of other protocols. It can offload single-board
computer nodes using its own processor. It is part of Dialogic's
Signaling Distributed Architecture, which manages cross-platform
signaling applications. Although it supports ATCA, the functionality in
this case is more important than form. In addition to the capacity for
four high-speed interfaces running at up to 2 Mb/s and up to 124
low-speed links, enhanced Sigtran functionality is an important feature
of the new product.
"We had limited Sigtran support before, but we are greatly enhancing
that with software functionality that accelerates the transition of
signaling from TDM to IP," Bryant said.
The reason functionality trumps form in this case is that "ATCA is just
another form factor to us," Bryant said. "We need to embrace whatever
standard form factor the industry is moving to."
And therein lies the question for NXTcomm. In what direction is the
industry moving now that Intel pulled out?
Dialogic began development on its soon-to-be-announced multimedia
platform when it was still part of Intel, so it necessarily supports
ATCA, which Bryant said is really the next generation of CompactPCI,
another standards-based form factor.
He said the company is not moving away from CompactPCI, and it will
continue to support and deliver product both for it and for ATCA. But
there are other standards on the horizon. One such standard we should
be
listening for at NXTcomm is MicroTCA.
Companies such as Kontron were talking about it last year and may feel
inclined to talk it up more this year, given the potentially waning
influence of Intel in the matter. Bryant wouldn't reveal Dialogic's
plans for MicroTCA, but he did say that over the next six to 12 months
the company would aggressively come to market with MicroTCA-based
products. And he added this: "To a certain extent, MicroTCA is taking
the industry by storm now."
MicroTCA was ratified by PICMG last July. It already has its own
summit,
which took place last week in Maryland. The technology is based on the
use of Advanced Mezzanine Cards and is much smaller than ATCA.
"ATCA's inherent problem has always been power consumption," Bryant
said. He added that the defense industry, a strong supporter of ATCA,
is
rapidly adopting the concepts of MicroTCA.
Dialogic won't be the only company not talking formally about MicroTCA
but still introducing new signaling solutions. Tekelec will be
launching
a new SIP Signaling Router, which is a product based on technology
acquired from Iptel.org.
In March, Tekelec and HP began touting their enhanced relationship
centered around interoperability between Tekelec's TekCore Session
Manager, a call state control function within IMS, and HP's OpenCall
home subscriber server, both of which run on ATCA-based blade servers.
At NXTcomm, Tekelec will be talking about the next phase of this
partnership strategy and the addition of important new members.
"Neither of us have an end-to-end next-generation solution on our own,
so we are forced to be very open and follow the standards," said Steve
French, senior manager with Tekelec's signaling group.
Perhaps NXTcomm will provide some direction.
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