Sangoma D150 Voice Transcoding Delivers Plug-and-Play Capabilities for Asterisk

By Susan J. Campbell, TMCnet Contributing Editor

Sangoma Technologies (News - Alert), a provider of hardware and software components designed to enable or enhance IP Communications Systems for voice and data, has announced the launch of the D150 voice transcoding series. 

This latest addition to the company’s transcoding board offering is targeted for the embedded and stand-alone VoIP solutions markets. The D150 is focused on providing plug-and-play capabilities for Asterisk (News - Alert). 

Network operators tend to be in a constant battle to maximize capital investment and improve ROI. In the process, these operators are trying to push through as much voice traffic as possible on their existing infrastructure. In supporting Asterisk, Sangoma is extending the value of its transcoding offerings. 

To deliver the right balance for operators, they may elect to encode the voice signals with any of a variety of VoIP codecs, including G.723 or G.729. If the call needs to traverse two different networks and each support different codecs, the voice signal must be transcoded in real-time. 

Even in Asterisk support, the process of encoding and transcoding can be processor intense and can cause load-related issues, with the server managing the process. Sagnoma’s D150 boards are specifically engineered to perform the required transcoding, without impacting the host performance. This allows the Asterisk system to support a significantly increased number of calls. 

For greater deployment possibilities and flexibility, the D150 series will support a range of industry standard codes and is offered in three form factors. The D150-ETH board delivers the ability to add transcoding capabilities for compact form factors where PCI (News - Alert) interfaces are unavailable, or when the CPU does not have the necessary power to handle extra loads. 

A very small footprint within an Asterisk environment can benefit from the D150-BOX appliance, as it provides the ability to set-up stand-alone transcoding media servers in small spaces. The D150-PMC board will allow for the addition of voice transcoding to be embedded in custom hardware designs that rely on the PMC IEEE (News - Alert) 1386 standard. 

"The D150 series along with our existing D100 and D500 offering provides increased deployment flexibility for developers and integrators," said Frederic Dickey, director of product management at Sangoma, in a statement. "Whether your telecom solution integrations call for standard servers with PCI interfaces or custom development, Sangoma offers a form factor to help you. Moreover, integration development investment is protected because the software that enables all D-series products is exactly the same." 

Existing Asterisk applications can start leveraging the D150 capabilities immediately. Additionally, the open source telephony software with compatible drivers can be used as a gateway or session border controller to deliver network-based transcoding services.
Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMCnet and has also written for eastbiz.com. To read more of Susan’s articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Jamie Epstein