Toolpack: Architecture, philosophy and evolution
Architecture
TelcoBridges products are very modular in nature. From a hardware perspective, they are designed as a general motherboard or main circuit board containing core device logic, with a series of modules or mezzanines available to provide auxiliary capabilities such as various network interfaces, support for different audio codecs, or support for tone or fax detection (as well as IVR).
On the software front, the Toolpack software is designed as a series of services / components that can be modified or replaced, by a solution developer with the proper expertise.
Philosophy
You can think of the configuration of the underlying Tmedia or Tdev device as a series of building blocks. This implies that there are certain blocks, or settings, that need to be put in place first before others can be laid on top of them.
In this case, you start with the most basic element, which is the actual physical interfaces; whether they are TDM interfaces such as E1/T1/J1 connections, DS-3 connections, optical or electrical STM-1 connections; Ethernet connections for the purpose of VoIP; or finally, when applicable, BITS interfaces for clocking.
Following that, you activate the different signaling protocol stacks, such as ISDN, SIP, CAS R2, and, where applicable, SS7 and SS7 SIGTRAN, the latter two of which are available with a separate license.
You then build out service description profiles that determine the supported audio codecs for use with mobile and internet telephony.
Finally, you configure the trunk groups, or in Toolpack terminology, the Network Access Points.
These settings are stored together as a single configuration. The Toolpack Engine, which runs as an application service, then takes the information provided in the active configuration settings and uses that to provide the switching, transcoding and signaling conversion services that are required.
Call routes, which are not handled by Toolpack Engine, can be defined only when the previous building blocks have been put in place. The actual call routing functionality can be provided by a 3rd party softswitch or by TB Media Gateway Application, which is bundled with all Tmedia devices.
Evolution
TelcoBridges’ first family of products were hardware blades featuring support for SIP, SS7 and ISDN signalling. Targeted at the computer telephony integration (or CTI) marketplace, these were based on the CompactPCI form factor.
In 2007, TelcoBridges introduced new lines of products based on a rack-mount form factor of 1U or 2U enclosures. This has allowed TelcoBridges to continue adding functionality, capacity and performance to its products, something that the CompactPCI form factor did not easily permit.
A key source of the technological advantage of TelcoBridges and its products is its in-house R&D team. By designing its own hardware logic via integrated circuits known as FPGAs, TelcoBridges has been able to pack a significant amount of functionality into a small form factor, enabling it to combine support for multiple industry standards and protocols in a single, very dense device.
