atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Wiring - Telecom Carriers - Trunks & Services T1's, CSU's and DSU's PRI circuits via "Soft Switches"

Where exactly are these soft switches located? I mean if a regular hardware switch is in a CO, is the soft switch on a PC in the CO as well?

This is a good topic. Please add something if you have any information that can help.

There are three CLECS in town that are all using "Soft switches" and we are having problems with modem and fax traffic too.

We are going to be installing a PRI from a softswitch in about a month or so---and don't feel real comfortable about it.

Any information that we can gather would be very useful.

Well, I spoke with an installation coordinator for Paetec, who we are in the process of switching over to. He asked me if there will be any fax or modem traffic over our PRI to which I responded with a resounding "YES!". He then informed me that they will either need to provide our fax and modem lines over POTS lines or they would need to send us our circuit out of their 5ESS. They are going to go ahead and change us to the 5E. That should be enough of a sign right there that the Santera soft switch has issues. Since it's using VOIP, and this type of traffic doesn't like VOIP, that's going to be a huge problem for them.

I agree---but it irritates me that a company would sell a product like that---knowing that people still use modems, have faxes, and have credit card machines.

They should take that into account, like your coordinator of Paetec did---but also put into POLICY that every line that is going to be used for those activities. has to be off that type of switch.

It's doesn't seem to be a big problem for them---or else they would have a "Plan B" for these very common scenarios. The problem is ours, it seems like. We have had to talk for hour upon hour to their techs to try and solve this problem---and it seems like there IS no solution that their techs can provide.

Our CLEC is doing a major "upgrade" next month. I wonder if this problem will be addressed?? Time will tell.

We also are having major problems with cordless phones, The phone are normal when calling another station, but when talking on an outside line---the transmission acts like a really bad cell phone call.

It's enough to drive you to drink!!

los415's comment about a switch no longer taking up 'a whole room' triggered a chuckle. You might like to know that the old XY/STEPPER/CROSSBAR switches took up entire LARGE floors. Or BUILDINGS! John C. (Not Garand)

Because of problems our company is having, who has actually had 'for sure' PRI problems out of soft switches. What brand if you know. And what LEC. Rather than bad mouth lecs/clecs & manufacturers on the board, I suppose you should PM me. And yes Ed and Mike, I finally cleared out my PM box. If anyone really wants a results list, I can tally up responses. But, again, I'll PM you. I'm not interested in getting into legal tangles. John C. (Not Garand)

from my working expierence the soft switches usally work fine for fax/modem/cc machines if you are going tdm all the way thru. what some lecs/clecs are now doing is since these soft switches are voip cabable they are starting to trunk calls out via sip and we all know modem type calls don't work via voip. there are ups and downs to both the cost of ip/ethernet to transport calls is much cheaper then your standard sonet type network to setup full tdm. down side is you loose your modem type calls. it basically comes down to picking your evil cheap transport and modem wont work or expensive transport/equipment and modem will work. i guess it comes down to the companys business plan.

Agreed. There are TDMOIP solutions that alleviate the VOIP problems, and give a reliable pathway to the packet switched network and back, especially the TDMOIP with circuit emulation, which is basically T1 over Ethernet. Again, it comes down to customers not understanding the trade-offs.

tdmoip is great except for the overhead atleast on the rad solution. i believe we where doing something like 15 megs to be able to transport 4x t1's. sph what tmdoip solutions have you used?

Yeah, I suppose RAD being the first with TDMoIP, have to recoup their R&D costs. Their products work as advertised though.
Recently, we were involved with a couple of customers who moved to TDMoIP using 2 different products from Actelis as the CPE. One was a straightforward T1-over-IP box, the other though was more interesting, it was acting basically as a remote LAN switch that could emulate all kinds of circuits at symmetric speeds of 45mb/second over regular copper wire at up to 3000 feet, or 50000 feet with repeaters (!). The "telco" has master layer 3 switches at the CO establishing point-to-point VLAN-based connections. This box can also establish "dynamic" T1 services, where the voice channels become data when not in use (and vice-versa). No PRI with dynamic T1 though.
The price blows "traditional" T1 out the water. The customer gets T1 speed and quality, and T1 SLAs from the provider. What do they care how the signal comes in?

[Edit: put in the correct distances]