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Linux to Power Telecoms Switches

Further evidence of the acceptance of Linux for applications in the telephony industry was revealed today, with the introduction of support for the operating system by industry-leading switching systems supplier, Adax. The company, which provides high performance wide area communications and signaling infrastructure systems, has added Red Hat Linux 6.2 to its portfolio of supported platforms for the first time.

The first product released for Linux 6.2 is the MTP-2 Protocol Software for Adax's APC7-cPCI/PCI, SS7 controller. This is a clear channel board providing high speed SS7 processing for T1, E1 and V.35 trunks. Two port and four port versions of the board are available.

Linux offers low entry cost, scalability, operating stability, ease of customisation, open source code, and the LIS Streams capabilities which all help towards lowering the overall cost of ownership of the total system, says Adax.

"The SS7 product is just the first of many Adax products for Linux. In the future, we will be porting all of our products to Linux to diversify our product line. This will strengthen our competitive position in the marketplace and reach a new customer base with companies using the Linux Operating System," said Robin Kent, Director, European Operations for Adax.

Subsequent releases of Adax products ported to Linux, currently planned, will include Frame Relay, LAPB/D/V5.2, X.25 and the newest HDC board which is capable of processing up to 32 SS7 links or 128 HDLC and PCM bearer channels. Links can be dynamically allocated and multiple protocols can be run in parallel. Adax "A-Streams" enables multiple protocols to be pushed down onto the on-board processor, which reduces the host CPU utilization and dramatically improves overall system performance.

The HDC board, along with the Adax ATM-OC3 board, and the Adax implementation of SCTP running under Linux will be the foundation for gateways and SIP servers providing convergence services to SCN, Internet, Wireless and Virtual Private Networks.