AudioCodes newest member in the Media Gateway (MGW) family, the Mediant 1000 is a CPE with a distinctive feature set designed to meet the special requirements in the CPE market while lowering the CAPX and OPEX.
As per the target market definition, the positioning of AudioCodes Mediant 1000 is different to that of the Mediant 2000. Where the Mediant 2000 is positioned as an “All-In-One” MGW whose strength lies in its ability to meet the needs of different markets – service providers as well as enterprises, access MGWs as well as trunking MGWs, wireline and wireless and various additional market segmentations, The Mediant 1000 is positioned specifically as a CPE to meet the special requirements of the access market.
Prior to designing the Mediant 1000, AudioCodes carefully studied the special requirements that the CPE market had obtained from MGWs. Findings determined that a set of requirements were not being addressed by MGWs available in the marketplace today.
AudioCodes' goal was to introduce a unique product that differed from other MGWs available in the VoIP Marketplace. This new product with a unique feature set provides solutions for challenges that customers are encountering with the available MGWs in the market. This unique feature set is named the “Mediant 1000 Forever”. This special feature set specifically addresses the Access Market. The Mediant 1000 is an Access MGW, designed to be installed in SMEs that migrate from traditional telephony to VoIP.
SMEs that have traditional telephony infrastructure, have two separate networks, a telephony network and a data network, these two networks have no interconnection between them. See Figure 1
As SMEs with traditional telephony migrate to VoIP the telephony network must be integrated into the data network, by having the legacy PBX connected to the IP network via a MGW. The common MGWs in the market could provide this connectivity with several different network architectures, however each offered solution includes both advantages and disadvantages. Only AudioCodes’ MediantTM 1000 offers a connectivity solution which combines the advantages, without being affected by the disadvantages of the different solutions.
Solution A: The migration to VoIP is achieved by disconnecting the trunk connection from the PBX to the PSTN network and then by connecting it to the MGW which is connected to the IP network.
The advantage: No need to use an additional trunk on the PBX (the trunk interfaces are expensive and not always available)
The disadvantage: The MGW is a single point of failure, though similar to the PBX itself, a malfunction in the MGW will cause the SME to be disconnected from telephony services. See Figure 2.
Solution B: The advantage of the offered solution is in the connectivity redundancy offered without the MGW being a single point of failure. In this solution the SME will keep the connection from the PBX to the PSTN network untouched since the connection is used for connectivity redundancy. In addition to the existing connection an additional trunk is used to connect the PBX with an additional second trunk to the IP network via the MGW.
The advantage: The MGW is not a single point of failure since in this solution the two network connections are redundant, where the original connection from the PBX to the PSTN is the redundant connection.
The disadvantage: The redundant connectivity from the PBX is implemented by using two trunks from the PBX, besides the fact that the solution is expensive because of the price of the PBX trunks, the main disadvantage is in the fact that this solution requires reconfiguring the PBX (modification of the dialing plans) – an operation that SMEs try to avoid. PBXs are legacy equipment that are rarely modified, SMEs do their best to avoid any modifications on the PBX since they usually do not have the skills to perform the modifications themselves and they try to avoid ordering this task from the PBX vendors. The attitude is that once the PBX is up and running it shall never be touched again.
See Figure 3
The aim of avoiding the reconfiguration of the PBX cause the SMEs to search for a solution offering a migration path to VoIP that will provide redundant connectivity together with avoiding the MGW from being a single point of failure and without requiring any reconfigurations on the PBX.
Audiocodes’ Mediant 1000 addresses this requirement with the innovative “Mediant 1000 Forever” Feature Set that offers redundant connectivity that provides telephony survivability via a single PBX trunk, as shown in figure 4:
“Mediant 1000 Forever” Feature Set has the unique ability to route the calls to the PSTN and IP networks according to several preconfigured parameters whose thresholds can be defined by the customer. The Mediant 1000 interfaces are:
- A single PBX trunk
- Dual Redundant Ethernet connection towards the IP Network
- A trunk connection towards the PSTN legacy network
Eliminating the requirement to reconfigure the PBX lowers the migration to VoIP OPEX, while the use of a single PBX trunk lowers the CAPX involved in the migration to VoIP.
The Mediant 1000 is not a single point of failure in the network, since in the case of failure in the unit, the trunk to the PSTN will act as a life-line interface to the PBX trunk, and the full capacity of telephony calls will continue via the PSTN network. Calls can be redirected to the PSTN in case of network problems or as a result of the IP network being over congested, where the definition of over congestion can be defined by the customer that has the flexibility to configure the thresholds.
“Mediant 1000 Forever” Feature Set guarantees a migration to VoIP without suffering from degradation in voice quality in a congested IP network as seen in solutions built with other vendors MGWs.
“Mediant 1000 Forever” Feature Set provides customers with significant lower CAPEX and OPEX as compared to other CPEs in the market. The low CAPEX and OPEX is achieved by the modularity and scalability of the Mediant 1000, that has the ability to scale up to 6 modules in a single chassis where each module can have either digital or analog interfaces, enabling customers that start with a Mediant 1000 with low density to scale up at a later stage of the project to higher densities by simply inserting additional modules in to the Mediant 1000 without replacing the installed equipment. Scaling up project density with equipment from other vendors would require one of these options – either replacing the low density equipment with higher density equipment or the alternative of not touching the installed equipment and adding capacity by affixing additional units that will be located site by site at the customers premises. This situation would cause manageability difficulties due to the number of separate boxes installed at each site, instead of having a single box that is easier to manage as well as offers a lower price per port.
Although most of the CPEs in the market have only a single interface type, many CPE applications require several interface types.
Figure 5 is an example for a distributed SME in which one of them has the following interface requirement:
- The site has a PBX installed (requires trunk interfaces)
- The site has fax machines that are not connected to the network behind the PBX
- The site needs connectivity to the PSTN for local calls
The centralized remote network management system that manages a large install base of Mediant™ 1000s as well as all the other MGWs offered by AudioCodes is a significant advantage since it speeds up and simplifies the installation at the customer premises while lowering the CAPEX and OPEX.
The service provider can configure and provision the box remotely without customer involvement. This eliminates the costly truck-roll process, which requires a skilled technician to visit a customer's site.
The Service Provider can monitor the entire network from a single point, detecting and overcoming problems in the equipment without the customer knowing that a problem has occurred. The importance of the centralized network management does not only include fault detection, isolation and correction but also for configuration operations in which a modification must be done for all the MGWs in the install-base which can consist of several hundreds or even thousands, or when software upgrading of all the MGWs is required and where performing the operation. without a centralized application can be very time consuming which will result in an expensive operation.
The “Mediant 1000 Forever” feature set is what makes the Mediant 1000 an innovative CPE that offers the customers enhanced functionality with lower CAPEX and OPEX.
Summary of the “Mediant 1000 Forever” feature set:
Provides enhanced unique functionality while lowering the OPEX & CAPEX
- Low OPEX – Deployment simplicity & flexibility – Single box installation simplifies complex installations
- Low CAPEX – Lower costs – Single box installation saves significantly on costs
- Scalability – Enhance port density easily while offering a Wide range of densities – “Pay as you grow approach” by adding up to six interface modules
- Modularity and Flexibility – Multiple Interfaces – Single box with T1/FXO/FXS interfaces.
- Seamless installation – No PBX reconfiguration – when connecting the PBX to the IP network, lowers the OPEX & CAPEX
- Lifeline Survivability – The Mediant 1000 will not disconnect the phones from service while meeting the required voice quality demands, overcoming hardware problems (e.g. power failure), network problems as well as congestion problems in the network.
- Remote Centralized Management.