ACADEMIA

Italtel presents NetMatch, a multi-functional family of products for guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS) Network Interconnection between traditional TDM, IP and 3G/4G networks, seamless migration from legacy TDM to all-IP networks and IMS architecture and supporting HD voice and video.

Italtel NetMatch is the answer to specific needs that emerge from the market today in terms of networks interconnection and new services. On the side of service providers, there is a significant need for quality monetization, that is a way to charge the traffic of customers and OTTs when guaranteed QoS is required. On the side of Enterprises and Public Administrations, the need is growing to evolve from a basic voice communication to a new communication that, taking advantage of mobility, extends to video and more generally to collaboration and a social networking approach.

These requirements led Italtel to design, implement and make available this new family of products with high performance, easy scalablility and able to manage the complexity involved in the interconnection between networks and the related exchange of information, which is accompanied with specific measurements and defined policies.

The world market of interconnection products is estimated by Infonetics in 2012 of approximately $ 900 million with an expected growth rate through 2015 equal to 15% on average. For the Italian market, the Italian Regulation Authority (AGCOM) in its recent resolution on VoIP interconnection has identified a need for about 30 points of interconnection for the next two years.

The architecture implemented by Italtel has an original and innovative value proposition, with low power consumption, available in single or in high availability configurations, designed to be future-proof because all products are compliant IPv4 and IPv6 and allow on the fly upgrades without disruption.

""NetMatch is positioned in a highly topical area, as evidenced by the recent decision of the Italian Regulation Authority (AGCOM) on all-IP interconnection and interoperability of VoIP services - said  Stefano Pileri, Italtel CEO  -. The decision is a milestone not only at Italian but also at International level, since it states that VoIP traffic with guaranteed quality has an economic value and must comply with accurate interconnection and coding rules. 2012 is going to become the year of general move to VoIP and possibly even of regulation of Video over IP. The growth of video services and of Machine to Machine and their application on vertical segments where performance is critical, such as Smart Grids and e-Health, is expected to make interconnections between networks with guaranteed performance and quality more and more relevant".

Thanks to NetMatch family, the network has, for example, the ability to monitor in real time what is the bandwidth required between two points and the degree of utilization of resources. If availability is not consistent with the request, it is possible to act in order to dynamically balance the available bandwidth and to ensure the end-to-end QoS defined by contracts. NetMatch thus represents a dynamic instrument for infrastructure monitoring and for the monetization of the quality of services.

NetMatch products are used in the networks migration from TDM to IP, the migration of mobile networks to LTE and the scenarios that use voice and video also in HD with the necessary protocol adaptations (from audioconferencing to video conferencing to telepresence).

The NetMatch family consists of:

• NetMatch-M - It is a Media Gateway that manages voice, data and video traffic passing from PSTN legacy networks to IP networks. By a simple software upgrade it can evolve to NetMatch B, thus allowing an high investment protection when needs are changing.

• NetMatch-B - It is a Border Gateway for multimedia traffic, voice and video, also in High Definition. Placed at the edge of the networks, it's specifically intended for IP to IP communication.

• NetMatch-S - It is a Session Border Controller that allows an interconnection at guaranteed quality between networks exchanging data flows. In the High Availability version it employs the specialized boards that Italtel has expressely designed for NetMatch B, while in the software only version can run too in a cloud environment, particularly suitable for small telcos and enterprises.

• NetMatch-D - It's a Diameter Routing Server responding to the needs of mobile operators during 3G/LTE evolution, able to manage the signalling interworking either inside the network either in roaming scenarios.

The NetMatch products are integrated into Italtel architectures for Networks at Guaranteed Quality, with advanced management tools for optimizing the operating costs and the Quality of Experience.

NetMatch-S has recently passed interoperability tests and has been certified for IP interconnection by a leading Italian Testing Lab. From 2012 NetMatch products will be included for trial and operation in the networks of several Italian telco operators.