Data Connection Announces Portable SS7 Software.

LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 3, 1999--Data Connection Limited (DCL), the world's leading vendor of portable ATM and SNA communications products, today announced that it is extending its highly successful product suite to include support for carrier class Signalling System 7 (SS7).

The new DC-SS7 product family provides the OEM market with a flexible source code solution suitable for use in a full range of telecom devices from traditional switches (SSPs), signal transfer points (STPs) and service control points (SCPs), to more recent developments such as IP telephony gateways (VoIP) and the infrastructure for 3rd generation wireless networks (IMT-2000 and UMTS). The DC-SS7 product suite runs within Data Connection's existing portable, non-blocking, message passing execution environment. This, combined with an advanced fault tolerant architecture, provides the performance, scalability and reliability required for the most demanding of today's SS7 applications.

"Today's carriers and enterprises require 99.9999% availability and are looking to increase both throughput and function of their networks" said Colin Dancer, Director of Data Connection's Telecoms Business Unit. "This requires SS7 software which supports fast signalling links, both broadband and narrowband traffic and which can be adapted to a range of uses. The DC-SS7 architecture has included these features from day one, along with fault tolerance, redundancy and portability. By utilizing our products and expertise, equipment vendors can reduce development cost and time to market, while being confident of meeting their customers' most stringent quality and reliability requirements. They also get the benefit of our continuing product development and an easy upgrade path to new features."

The initial members of the DC-SS7 product family implement the Message Transfer Part, ISDN User Part, Transaction services and Call Control for both narrowband and broadband SS7 networks. Support is provided for a wide range of national and international variants including those defined by the ITU, ANSI, ETSI and ATM Forum. Products will become available during the course of 1999.

The full list of family members and their functions is as follows.

- DC-ISUP (ISDN User Part)

Supports the protocol to setup, maintain and drop narrowband

calls across an SS7 network.

- DC-BISUP (Broadband ISDN User Part)

Supports the protocol to setup, maintain and drop broadband calls

across an SS7/ATM network.

- DC-MTP3 (Message Transfer Part - Level 3)

Provides the traffic, link and route management for narrow and

broadband signalling networks.

- DC-SAAL (ATM signalling adaptation layer)

Implements reliable data transfer over ATM signalling links.

- DC-SCCP (Signalling Connection Control Part)

Provides end-to-end routing and global title translation.

- DC-TCAP (Transaction Capabilites Application Part)

Provides access to remote network entities such as databases and

management applications. TCAP is an integral part of the

"Intelligent Network" concept.

- Call Control including interworking between ISDN, ISUP, B-ISUP,

ATM UNI and ATM PNNI is provided by DC-Gateway, DCL's generic

gateway product.

DC-SS7 integrates seamlessly with DCL's Asynchronous Transfer Mode (DC-ATM) and VoIP/Gateway (DC-Gateway) products, and uses the same proven communications framework. This framework has been ported to a large number of operating systems including VxWorks, pSOS, Chorus, Nucleus, Solaris, HP-UX and Windows NT, and has been used on all common processors including x86, i960, Motorola 860, Sparc, IDT and MIPS. Proprietary OSs and chipsets can be supported with minimal effort.

Data Connection Limited (DCL) is the leading independent developer and supplier of ATM, Conferencing, Messaging, Directory and SNA portable products. Customers include Hewlett-Packard, IBM Corp., Cisco, Fujitsu, Microsoft, Nortel, 3Com, Bay Networks, Cabletron, NCR and Hitachi. Data Connection is headquartered in London UK, with US offices in Virginia. It was founded in 1981 and is privately held. During each of the past 18 years its profits have exceeded 20% of revenue. Last year sales exceeded $24M, of which 90% were overseas, mostly in the US.

For information, contact Colin Dancer at [e-mail], phone [phone] or visit our Web site at http://www.datcon.co.uk/atm/teleidx.htm.