TMCnet's SIP Week in Review

By Stefania Viscusi

TMCnet Assistant Editor

 

This just in: The abundance of SIP news this week may be more than the amount of rainfall currently accumulating in the North East. This week, headlines showered in from Bandwidth.com, SIP Forum, CBeyond, Truphone, Polycom (News - Alert), Lucent, Mitel (News - Alert) and a host of others.

 

Mitel made SIP-related news this week, not once, but twice. In an agreement with Bandwidth.com, Mitel announced their 3300 IP Communications Platform (ICP) would be bundled together with Bandwidth.com's nationwide SIP trunking service, also announced this week.

 

With the new agreement, companies who utilize the 3300 ICP are offered a single, more secure connection to the PSTN with the ability to sign up for the Bandwidth.com SIP trunking service.

 

Also this week, TMCnet's Patrick Barnard reported that Mitel would integrate its 3600 Security Gateway (News - Alert) with BorderWare Technologies' SIPassure VoIP security solution.

 

Patrick wrote, "The combined solution is said to provide application layer security to protect against SPIT (Spam over Internet Telephony), Denial of Service, Unauthorized Registration and other types of VoIP attacks which could easily penetrate packet-layer security devices."

 

SMB's can also rejoice this week at the cost efficiencies they will now receive thanks to Mediatrix Telecom (News - Alert) who announced the launch of a new IP-based PBX (News - Alert) solution. TMCnet's Mae Kowalke reported, "Mediatrix's newly-introduced 3000 series VoIP gateways and pbxnsip's SIP-based IP PBX have been integrated to create a seamless, standalone solution for SMB's." With the new solution, users are given easy configuration and options customizing.

 

Lucent Technologies (News - Alert) made a SIP breakthrough this week when along with announcing the release of their newest additions to their VPN Firewall portfolio (Brick 700 and Brick 1200), they also announced they have fixed a serious "security flaw tied to SIP and other dynamic protocols used to deliver advance IP services like VoIP", TMCnet's Arthur Cole reported.

 

The new technology, called Dynamic Pinholing shuts down ports that are not essential during an IP session and eliminates the possibility for hackers to access the network.

 

To help vendors to demonstrate the interoperability of their premise-based IP PBX or hosted software with Polycom's SoundPoint IP desktop and SoundStation IP conference phones and SIP software, Polycom announced this week it's VoIP Interoperability Partner Program for manufactures of SIP-based call control platforms, TMCnet's Cindy Waxer reported.

 

"Interoperability testing between SIP-based call control platforms and phones deployed with them is critical to ensuring reliability and comprehensive feature support"

Waxer quoted Paul Waadevig, industry manager for Frost & Sullivan's Conferencing & Collaboration practice as saying.

 

In more interoperability and conference phone news, ClearOne Communications announced this week that their MAXAttach IP and MAX IP tabletop conference phone solutions are complaint with Avaya's SIP-based IP telephony solutions. According to a recent news release, up to four of the SIP phones can be daisy-chained together.

 

Ubiquity Software (News - Alert) made news this week with the release of 7.1 of their SIP Application Server. New enhancements in the latest release include improvements for service providers. Silent Installation, Management Sever HA and Service Director Load Balancing are among some of the other new features.

 

"The enhanced capabilities of Ubiquity SIP A/S version 7.1 allows our customers to continue to further leverage this commercially proven platform to realize significant competitive advantages in terms of shortening development time, accelerating time-to-market and delivering carrier grade services," commented John Hart, vice president of product line management for Ubiquity Software in a statement to the press.

 

In the SIP trunking market, Cbeyond and BroadSoft are making their mark announcing this week the successful deployments by a dozen IP PBX vendors who used their SIP Trunking Service.

 

The service utilizes the SIPConnect specification for direct interoperability. According to the news release, the specification is now a proposed recommendation by the SIP Forum, who also made news this week when they announced the launch of the SIPconnect initiative. According to a news announcement, SIPconnect, the new industry standard, "is designed to specifically tie enterprise customers to VoIP service providers using end-to-end IP connection."

 

Finally, TMC's Tom Keating blogged about the new Truphone SIP client for mobile phones with free calling.  Commenting on SIP, Keating wrote, "The SIP-based software incorporates several leading-edge techniques, including the slef-healing, small-footprint AMR codec to ensure optimal call quality even under less than optimal conditions; and unlike other Wi-Fi applications, Trupone uses smart, low-level coding to minimize battery usage."

 

And if that flood of SIP news wasn’t enough, here's some more to keep you hydrated until next week:

 

SIP Magazine