10/08-04   -   Pressmeddelande

innovaphone IP-Telephony System in the Deutsches Forschungsnetz (DFN)

innovaphone IP-Telephony System in the Deutsches Forschungsnetz (DFN)

Sindelfingen, German universities and research institutions will soon be able to conduct a large part of their telephone calls through the Deutsches Forschungsnetz DFN (German National Research and Education Network)). In a pilot project started to test the suitability of this solution for the everyday use, all calls between the DFN offices in Berlin and Stuttgart are currently being handled as VoIP calls via the research network.

More than 500 science and research facilities all over Germany will be able to employ this solution in the near future.
Universities and research facilities in Germany are connected via the Deutsches Forschungsnetz, Germany´s national research and education community. DFN is administered by the individual universities; its backbone is the G-WiN (Gigabit-Wissenschaftsnetz / Gigabit Research Network). As a preliminary test, the DFN Society´s telephone service between the two locations in Berlin and Stuttgart is currently being handled with IP-based devices provided by the IP-specialist innovaphone from Sindelfingen.

innovaphone delivered one VoIP gateways IP 3000 to each of the two locations, so that all internal telephony between the individual research institutions can be handled via the DFN, at no additional costs. In both Berlin and Stuttgart, the IP telephony systems could be migrated into the existing infrastructures with very small expenditure of time, money, and energy.

A decisive factor for this tryout of an IP-based infrastructure had been technological considerations relating to the DFN Society´s research project concerning the convergence of speech and data in one network. innovaphone´s IP solution particularly allows for audio/video conferencing without the need for any additional devices or software.

With IP telephony, extant telephony systems in the individual offices can be connected via the present network structure. This opens up a range of administrative as well as organizational possibilities that traditional technology does not offer, including call forwarding across locations or groups with members from different locations. Unified messaging services (answering device, fax) can also be flexibly integrated.

The audio/video conferencing function, much used in the communication between the individual universities, is implemented on the innovaphone PBX´s gatekeeper and may be activated from any H.323-based device registered with the gateway.

As Guido Lankes, innovaphone account manager in charge of the project, emphasizes, "the IP infrastructure opens important new perspectives to the DFN Society, particularly regarding their plan to converge speech and data in one network (network convergence). The innovaphone solution is consistently standard-compliant and extremely flexible, and does thus meet all the requirements of one of the internationally leading research and education networks."

Holger Wirtz, project director for the test phase, adds, "what is of foremost importance are the additional performance features with which we´re planning to expand the range of the time-tested DFN telephony service. In cooperation with the participants of the DFN telephony service, we want to test these expansions and develop them even further."