Avaya has acquired Route Science Technologies as a way for Avaya VoIP customers to better assure the quality of their VoIP calls over the WAN. Specific terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Avaya says it plans to keep selling the Route Science Adaptive Network Software (ANS) device which plugs into customer networks and evaluates how well WAN connections are working and can redirect traffic to the one that best supports VoIP, says Hal Clark, Avaya's product manager for assured networks.
The Route ANS gear plugs into a corporate network as a peer for border gateway protocol (BGP) routers, sharing routing information with customer-edge and service-provider routers. The ANS decides, based on policies set by users, which of the multiple WAN links to use. The policies take into consideration factors such as delay, jitter, packet loss, time of day and cost of service. BGP alone picks the best path based solely on which one requires the fewest router hops, which may or may not be the best performing path.
While ANS doesn't guarantee quality of service, it does give customers a better chance of getting a network connection that is responsive enough to support a high-quality call, says Clark. "It gives you a greater probability that phone calls you place on the network will perform the way you expect them to," he says.
For sites that have only one WAN IP link, the ANS can monitor traffic and determine what portions of the network are responsible for problems, making it possible to address them more quickly, Clark says.
Ultimately Avaya plans to incorporate ANS software in other Avaya platforms, he says. So, for example, Avaya call center software might be bundled with ANS software to help support better call quality for IP call centers, he says. This type of integration will take place next year, he says.
