SALEM, N.H. — NComm Inc. has signed a pact with Maxim Integrated Products subsidiary Dallas Semiconductor, to integrate the NComm trunk management software for managing DS3 and E3 circuits, with Dallas's DS3112 DS3/E3 framer chips. The pact puts NComm in the position of supporting all major semiconductor vendors of time-division multiplexed (TDM) framers, including PMC-Sierra Inc., Agere Inc., Infineon Technologies Inc., and Altera Corp.
NComm chief executive Bill Matern, who left softswitch pioneer Summa 4 in the mid-1990s to found NComm, said that his company has carved out a protected space in WAN interface software, because many vendors such as NetPlane Systems and Intel's Trillium group focus on ATM, Sonet, or TDM speeds faster than 50 Mbits/sec.
"Let's face it, this knowledge is becoming more valuable over time, because many of the experts in T1 and T3 channel services are either retired or dead," said John Brandte, vice president of business development at NComm. "But the slower speed services are not going away by any means, so trunk management expertise is a must."
NComm tries to keep trunking features such as performance monitoring, alarms, and robbed-bit signaling common for all semiconductor architectures, leaving only a driver layer that is unique to each vendor's chip set. This makes it easier for OEMs to compare framer architectures, a factor that made some semiconductor companies initially reticent of moving to the NComm software suite. Matern said that the universal clamor for open software interfaces has lessened that hesitation, as OEMs and framer IC manufacturers alike try to avoid coding proprietary trunking software.
NComm software also interfaces with real-time kernels directly. The company works with Wind River Systems on Tornado/VxWorks integration, and also has ported its software to such OS's as Nucleus and pSOS+. The software already is embedded in equipment from such vendors as Sonus Networks, 3Com Corp., and ADC Telecommunications.
The traditional licensing model has NComm retrieve costs from the OEM user of the framer chips rather than the IC vendor. Such pricing for DS3/E3 software modules typically starts at $20,000.
