Xelor Software Introduces XelorRate Service Quality Manager, Software for Ensuring Quality of IP Telephony and VoIP.

SALEM, N.H. -- Xelor Software(TM) today introduced XelorRate(TM) Service Quality Manager, the industry's first proactive software for ensuring the reliability, performance and quality of realtime IP communications, such as IP telephony (IPT) and voice over IP (VoIP). The software-only solution lets enterprises realize the inherent efficiencies of IP telephony while maintaining quality standards that match or surpass existing PSTN networks.

Although IP telephony promises significant cost savings and new productivity, corporate adoption has been slower than predicted because realtime IP communications currently suffer from Quality of Service (QoS) problems caused by packet delay, jitter, latency, insufficient network capacity, and competition for bandwidth between data and realtime applications. XelorRate Service Quality Manager is the first effective solution for overcoming these QoS problems that degrade IP telephony.

XelorRate is a Linux application for the Red Hat operating system that provides exceptional voice quality without user intervention or complex maintenance procedures. The software automatically integrates with IP telephony systems and leverages industry standards for QoS to deliver simplified network configuration, dynamic bandwidth allocation and automated packet prioritization.

"Network QoS is key for IP network transport of realtime traffic, but its implementation complexities combined with the average dynamics of an organization's IP network makes effective QoS an overly complex, time consuming process," said John Bartlett, vice president of NetForecast, a widely known and respected industry consulting firm. "XelorRate software automates QoS configuration and bandwidth management dynamically, which introduces new reliability for enterprise networks. For example, in Cisco-based environments, XelorRate makes QoS a simplified operational process rather than a burdensome network engineering task."

With XelorRate software, an enterprise can easily ensure the reliability, performance and quality of its realtime IP communications traffic by unleashing its data network investment, enforcing its QoS policy end-to-end, and controlling its network resources on a proactive basis.

XelorRate software unleashes an enterprise's network investments by using SNMP, including RFCs 1213, 1493 and 2674 for bridging and routing MIBs, to automatically discover network elements and topology and then configure these elements for QoS according to industry best practices and the network equipment provider's reference manual for QoS.

XelorRate software configures Class of Service (CoS) for VLANs and Layer 2 (as defined by IEEE standard 802.1 p/q) and Differentiated Services for Layer 3 (or Diffserv, as defined by RFCs 2474 and 2475) mappings and queues, establishes trust on trunk port interfaces, and defines service priority on egress port interfaces.

By leveraging an organization's existing investment in networking equipment, XelorRate software provides a lower cost approach to enterprise QoS than buying and administering new hardware devices.

After the initial QoS configuration, XelorRate software enforces the QoS policy end-to-end by interfacing to the IP telephony system to obtain call events, including inbound and outbound calls, internal and external calls, transfers, and multi-party conferences. For each new call, XelorRate uses its Service Admission Control (SAC) algorithm to evaluate available bandwidth and delay bounds along the end-to-end path of the call.

When XelorRate SAC returns a favorable response, XelorRate software can control network resources proactively by assigning the appropriate bandwidth allocation and flow treatment with Access Control List (ACL) entries on the access ports closest to the source and destination of the call. The ACL entries mark the IP packets for CoS Type 5 and Expedited Forwarding (EF) -- the highest priority treatment and the appropriate service classes for VoIP traffic. Finally, XelorRate clears the ACL entry on call tear-down, re-sets the ports to the untrusted state and updates the network resource database to reflect the newly available bandwidth.

Controlling resources proactively is the alternative to "set and forget" methodologies that mark all IP realtime communications packets for EF regardless of the current state of the network or traffic queues. With "set and forget" strategies it is easy to degrade the performance of realtime communications by overwhelming the EF queues as network traffic increases. In contrast to "set and forget" methodologies, XelorRate software assigns bandwidth on a call-by-call basis, proactively isolates voice calls from non-realtime data traffic and protects existing calls when congestion occurs.

When the XelorRate SAC returns an unfavorable response, the call proceeds but with the default Best Effort (BE) prioritization as opposed to the higher EF prioritization. This key capability maintains high voice quality, because a congested EF queue can create unwanted packet delay, jitter and loss.

Throughout the provisioning and control process, the XelorRate Administration System serves as an interface to a wide collection of data about the network, the network infrastructure configurations, and the results of the realtime SAC calculations. These reports give the network administrator a central view without having to visit each element to look at the class and policy maps that have been established.

Specifications, Availability and Pricing

Xelor Software supports the two leading IP PBXs with XelorRate for Avaya Communication Manager and XelorRate for Cisco CallManager. XelorRate software runs on an off-the-shelf Linux server with 2.4Ghz or faster Intel Pentium 4 processor, 1G or more RAM, 50G or larger hard drive and Red Hat Enterprise Server 4.0.

XelorRate software is currently available for purchase. Typical configurations and pricing range from $14,700 for an organization with 200 seats to $61,000 for an organization with 1500 seats. Enterprises should contact Xelor Software for addition details and pricing for their particular configuration.

About Xelor Software

Xelor Software Inc., headquartered in Salem, N.H., is the developer of the first proactive solutions for service quality management (SQM) for enterprises deploying IP telephony systems. The software is the only SQM solution that unleashes the power of an enterprise's existing networking infrastructure, enforces service quality policy end-to-end, and controls network resources for realtime IP communications on a proactive basis. More information on Xelor Software is available at http://www.xelorsoftware.com.

Xelor Software, Xelor and XelorRate are trademarks of Xelor Software Inc. All other products or services referenced may be trademarks or service marks of their respective companies or organizations.