Content area
Full Text
Whether Nuera Communications' new VOIP gateway, named ORCA, lives up to its killer-whale moniker in the marketplace remains to be seen. But based on preliminary results from the lab, competitors may have to swim a little faster and harder.
The ORCA is among the first of a new class of high-end VOIP gateways to surface. Similar high-end systems are known to be under construction at Cisco, Clarent, Ericsson, Lucent, Nortel and other VOIP equipment vendors. Most are expected to debut by the end of this year or early next year.
ORCA, a 21 -slot system, represents a big leap in VOIP gateway capacity for Nuera, and a sharp turn for the vendor into carrier waters. The vendor's predecessor F200 VOIP gateway, a BCR BestIn-Test Award winner for the past two years, handles just a single T1 or E1. By contrast, ORCA supports up to 17 T1s or E1s.
Quality Matters
We tested the ORCA with up to four T1s full of traffic, using both of the vocoders currently supported by...