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Simply Speaking
Athena Call Director

Article Number: A013
Article Type: Application
Modified: August 2, 1999

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.

MORE INFORMATION

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.

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Copyright © 1999 Develcon Electronics Ltd.  All Rights Reserved.