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SUMMARY
Develcon's voice and data integration strategy involves providing the best
quality voice, integrated with a comprehensive and flexible set of data and
legacy features, encapsulated in a modular, scalable package. The Athena Call
Director is the cornerstone of this strategy and plays a pivotal role in the
delivery of large-scale solutions for voice and data integrated networks. Teamed
with Athena Access and its voice networking features, the Athena Call Director
(ACD) augments the call and data integration services into a seamless, easily
managed solution.
This article will serve to provide an overview of this feature, giving the
reader a direct understanding of its power and flexibility, and how it improves
the call routing implementation of a voice and data integrated network.
Introduction
The integration of voice and data continues to be a hot topic for many
corporations who are in the process of streamlining operations by leveraging
existing connectivity to remote branch offices. Develcon recognized that this
process is almost always evolutionary. As such, selecting the right solution now
that will fulfill the immediate needs of the corporation, while yeilding
scalability for future needs without the added expense of additional hardware or
software is key. This recognition resulted in the creation of the Athena Call
Director.
Call Director Overview
The Athena Call Director provides voice switching and enhanced call routing
for Athena and Athena Access voice/data networks. It can become the central
point of a small to medium-sized voice and data network, or an integral part of
a multi-tier architecture involving hundreds of sites and locations. It augments
both the Voice-over-Frame-Relay and Voice-over-IP applications by allowing calls
between these two voice networking technologies seamlessly and transparently.
Call Routing
Just one of the many advantages of the Athena Call Director is its ability to
centralize complex voice call routing information. In large-scale networks,
management of call routing tables can be tedious, time-consuming, and redundant.
With the Call Director, Athena can centralize this information and act as a
gateway and call route server for edge nodes, reducing, and in some cases
eliminating, call routing tables on these remote edge devices.
In a large voice/data network, it is not uncommon to have hundreds of voice
call route entries required for a device to provide any-to-any voice
connectivity. By using the Athena Call Director, the details for all possible
connections in the network can be maintained centrally in the Voice Call Routing
Table, easing management tasks and minimizing potential errors in call routing.
Call Director with VoIP
In a Voice-over-IP application, the Athena Call Director also becomes a Call
Route Server, further simplifying call routing. This server provides translation
between the Called voice destination numbers and their associated IP address.
In cases where a remote Athena Access, for example, needs additional call
routing information, or doesn't have a specific route to a requested call
destination, it can query the Call Director on a remote Athena node and have the
information sent to it. The Athena Call Director will return the requested
information and the Athena Access can then directly route the call to its
ultimate destination.
In each Athena Access up to four (4) Athena Call Directors may be configured
to allow call route redundancy or to help regionalize call routing.
Call Director with VoFR
In a Frame Relay environment, the Athena Call Director provides the
encapsulation of voice and data using the Frame Relay Forum's Implementation
Agreements FRF.11 and FRF.12. With these IAs, voice calls may be multiplexed
onto one DLCI along side other data ensuring priority handling of voice traffic.
Data, such as LAN traffic, can be merged and demultiplexed passing in and
through the Athena to its integral LAN port or to an attached router, allowing
voice to pass to its destination transparently.
Call Director Flexibility
When merging voice technology into a pre-existing network infrastructure (a
private IP-routed network, for example) and extending its reach into a public
Frame Relay network, the Athena Call Director can perform the translation of
Voice over IP to a Voice over Frame Relay connection transparently and without
impact. The Call Director's powerful routing call groups minimizes the
operational impact of transitioning or transporting voice calls between IP- and
Frame Relay-based networks.
Call Director Scalability
Through the simplification of call route management and providing a Call
Route Server in Voice-over-IP environments, not to mention the distribution of
call route processing, the Athena Call Director provides a truly scalable
architecture that can grow with the network.
In performance terms, each CPU of an Athena node may perform its own unique
Call Routing, distributing the processing load across each CPU. This allows an
Athena node to process in excess of 1100 active voice calls previously only
achievable in carrier-class products. | 
