This is part two of a set of articles describing the
benefits of Aculab’s range of IP-centric Prosody X media processing boards for
developers of large scale communications platforms.
In part
one, it was stated that there are many advantages in having IP at the core
of the Prosody X media processing board, not least of which is the high channel
counts made possible by such an architecture. But that is just one aspect…
Choosing IP connectivity enables a distributed architecture
In putting IP technology at the heart of the Prosody X design it is much simpler, due to the ubiquity of Ethernet in IT networks, to build multi-board, multi-chassis and multi-location systems using Prosody X. So if the high channel counts of a single Prosody X board are not enough, then it is easy to build multi-board systems.
The traditional way
Before VoIP entered the telephony world, we depended on TDM
technology and an array of disparate CAS and CCS type PSTN protocols, and most
of the voice-based solutions had a common architecture, simply described as a
host server with telephony boards. Voicemail, interactive voice response (IVR),
call centre or fax broadcast solutions had a common architecture with all parts
integrated in one physical unit.
![]() |
Figure 1 – Traditional voice-based solutions architecture |
The interconnection between the cards was done via the
proprietary telephony bus H.100/H.110, while the high level application
controlled the boards using the PCI bus that is present in the chassis or the
computer server.
Although achieving the main objective of delivering a
defined functionality set within a reasonable cost, employing the traditional
architecture creates a significant headache for the developers when additional
sophistication from such a solution is required:
- Scalability – difficult to add capacity with minimal added cost
- Redundancy or adding fault tolerance – technically cumbersome to achieve and almost doubles the CAPEX
Remote system management, hitless software upgrades, and
hardware maintenance in the system without interrupting the service, also add
to the comprehensive list of system requirements that lead to increased
architectural complexity and spirals the cost of solutions utilising the traditional
architecture.
A better way
What is needed is the implementation of a distributed architecture. A distributed
architecture offers scalability, redundancy, remote management and high service
continuity at a minimal added cost. A sample architecture is shown below.
![]() |
Figure 2 – Distributed voice-based solutions architecture |
In choosing IP connectivity at the core of Prosody X, we enabled
developers to utilise the inherent strength of IP to allow remote devices to
communicate distantly and operate as if they were all present locally. So if a
single Prosody X board does not offer enough processing power, then adding
further media processing resources is a very simple task. Or if you wish to
separate the media processing resources (DSP boards) into physically separate
servers for resilience/fault tolerance, then this too is easy to achieve as the
servers require just an IP connection between them.
Many of our customers have taken advantage of this approach
to build large scale systems, such as voice conferencing platforms or fax
servers supporting thousands of channels of capacity. Others have used the
ability to physically separate the resource boards to build fully redundant mission
critical communications platforms. Whatever your requirements of a media processing
platform, Prosody X offers a flexible, cost-efficient and scalable solution.
To find out more about our latest member of the Prosody X
family, visit the new
8 trunk Prosody X PCIe board page. Or for an overview of the whole Prosody
X range visit the DSP
based media processing page.
Andrew Nicholson
Andrew Nicholson
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