Quintum Technologies Inc. will release two gateway devices aimed at bringing IP telephony to remote and branch offices that have access to only analog phone connections.
The Tenor MultiPath voice-over-IP gateways, to be announced at NetWorld+Interop 2000 in Atlanta this week, are low-cost devices that can be used to connect far-flung branch offices to corporate headquarters via the Internet. This setup could be used to avoid long-distance charges and international calling tariffs.
The four-port Tenor MultiPath A400 and eight-port A800 gateways sit between a small branch office PBX, the public switched telephone network (PSTN) and an IP router. The device analyzes phone traffic from the PBX and can be programmed to identify numbers such as long-distance area codes and country codes. Based on user settings, the gateway then routes the traffic over the PSTN or packetizes the call and sends it over an IP network.
"The big advantage to this device is that it lets your voice-over-IP solution be completely transparent to the PBX," says Charles Rutledge, vice president of marketing for Quintum.
Both gateways also have quality-of-service features that monitor the utilization of a remote office's IP connection. If the connection becomes bogged down, the gateway can reroute calls using the PSTN as a back-up connection. The gateways are H.323-compliant, allowing for videoconference traffic. Each device also features Real-time Transport Protocol multiplexing to combine voice packets from several calls into one frame.
The Tenor MultiPath Gateway A400 costs $2,000, and the A800 sells for $3,500. Both are available now.
Quintum: www.quintum.com