Customer Reviews

Softswitch : Architecture for VoIP (Professional Telecom)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book, sometimes gets it right and sometimes doesnt. The graphics are not great and they should be. Some of the tables employed are not significant enough to explain the points started. I think this book takes a small bite when it should be taking a large chunk out of explaining the subject matter.

I got this book because the book claims to evaluate softswitch advantages as a Class 4 replacement. I work for a telecommunications company and one of our projects was to expand our long distance capability at the lowest costs possible. We evaluated the softswitches out there and determined the technology had not matured enough to replace hardware switches.

This book does explain the architecture and protocols, and for many SOHO's out there, it is a viable alternative. However, this book is deceptive in claiming that there is no reason not to immediately migrate from circuit switched Class 4 to a softswitch Class 4. After reading this book I believed that only configuration errors would stop migration, but my personal experience differs from the author.

I have experience to know that the softswitch products out there are either good for small scale migrations or as a MUX between real circuit switch hardware. Claims of Class 4 replacements are vaporware.

Because this book was the first one about softswitch does not make this a 5 star book. There is better white pages out there and sales literature that is better, and more realistic, than this book. I think the 5 star reviews are either shills or someone who has not read this book.

"FINALLY, someone has taken the time and effort to define softswitch and lay out the architecture for a VoIP replacement of the PSTN. Author Ohrtman goes into painstaking detail to overcome the usual objections to VoIP in general and softswitch in particular, that is: reliability ("five 9s"), scalability,
Quality of Service, features and applicaitons and signaling. Not only does this book lay out the technical details of this revolutionary/evolutionary technology, but the author also delves into the economics and politics of softswitch and VoIP. This book is both a snapshot of the telecom infrastructure of today as well as explaining how the PSTN will be replaced by an all-IP network. No serious telecommunications professional should be without this book!

It was not until after I purchased this book and started to read it did I discover that the author "has many years experience in sales of VoIP and softswitch platforms." It shows. This book does not read like a major reference and learning tool, but more like a sales seminar only to answer potential customer's objections on softswitch technology.

I am a senior technician in a major telecommunications company. I have worked on several softswitch platforms from several vendors. I have hands-on experience in both the lab and live environments, and was hoping this book to be a valuable resource on softswitch technology.

There is a bullet point on the cover of the book, "Risks and payoffs" so I anticipated real world failings of softswitch issues and techniques to overcome them. Only minor theoretical "risks" are identified but quickly dismissed with a "car salesman" answer. Nothing substantial at all.

The book is adequate in discussing the protocols used in the VoIP and SIP environments. It is far lacking in the real world application of these protocols. It also fails in the argument that softswitch products are currently are as reliable as any major class 4/5 switch available. On a similiar vein, it appears that the figures used in the economic value chapter are best guesstimates of a salesman, not real world success stories. I can give the author several examples, one being a major US university, of organizations that attempted to migrate to softswitch, and pulled back after it was determined to be a major loss with no end in sight. They pulled back and remained with the legacy system.

In their current state, I would not dare replace my most important class 5 offices with a softswitch. For the near future, the 5ESS, DMS, or even the AXE are far superior products in providing class 5 services. This book could be a valuable reference if the hype was balanced with a more realistic assessment of current softswitch offerings.

I finished this book feeling like I watched a football game, but instead of listening to the professional analysis from the play-by-play announcer, the audio was fed in from the cheerleading squad.

Finally a book from a known publishing house about softswitch. The book is about the definition, need and scope of the softswitch from both a technical and economic perspective. The piece dealing with the current trend and the future market is particularly well written. Highly recommended to the newbies as well as to the know-it-all folks of softswitch world.

Ohrtman explains the basic structure and the functionality of VoIP technology, with a respective amount of indepth information he does a good job in explaining each criteria.

MORE AT http://satisfyingsolutions.com

This book has fifteen interesting chapters.

Chapter one explains the reliability and quality of service while chapter two goes on to talk about voice digitization and signaling.

Chapter three explains IP phones and chapter four explains thoroughly what VoIP is.

Chapter five: SIP is introduced,

chapter six is about switching and chapter seven explains human error.

Next, chapter eight talks about quality of service and improving QoS on the network.

Chapter nine is about interworking SS7 and VoIP Networks and SIP for telephones;

chapter ten explains features and applications and application programming interfaces.

Next, chapter eleven is titled Softswitch economics and talks about bandwidth saving while chapter twelve is about deconstruction of service providers and disruption of the legacy telecommunications value network.

Chapter thirteen is about broadband along with converged networks independent of ILEC infrustructure and chapter fourteen is about the past, present, and future of softswitch and functional entities.

Lastly chapter fifteen is basically the conclusion of all points made in the previous chapters.

Ohrtman teaches the concepts and structure of VoIP technology throughout the book. To summarize the book, he shows how softswitches will affect systems, services, and vendors and how one can learn how to get hardware level quality, scalability, and signaling from a softswitch.

It also explains clearly the technology of VoIP along with the risks and payoffs. This book is an excellent tool to learn about VoIP technology, if one likes new innovative technology this book would be a good recommendation.

The average person would find the content of the book to be quite hard to comprehend or somewhat confusing but overall it has interesting facts and one can enhance their intellect fairly well.

A. J. Baltes

We get a lot of inquiries from our corporate customers asking if and how they should transition to VoIP. Usually, we send them a copy of this book and we always get the contract to switch over the customer to a VoIP infrastructure. This book has done wonders for our business.

Mr. Ohrtman spends much of the book to argue his case for VOIP rather than discussions of how it works and how it interfaces with the PSTN. The technical discussions, especially for the local loop alternatives, were very basic and not of much value.

The book can be interesting for anyone wants a first contact with Voip technology, however, the constant repetitions in the text, such as the countless mentions of the "Lucent 5ESS 3500 features", the "Clayton Christiensen axiom" and many others, make reading this book an extremely boring experience. I estimate that a basic review of the text for a second edition, can cut off roughly 10% of the text (and hopefully, the price too).

This is the book that traditional switchmakers like AT&T, Nortel, Ericsson, Siemens and Alcatel and LECs like Verizon and QWest don't want you to read. Softswitch poses a highly disruptive threat to telecom monopolies. This book pulls no analytical punches in pointing out how the array of softswitch technologies (Class 4 and 5 replacement, IP Centrex, and IP-PBX) provide a lower barrier to entry to the service provider market and how this technology saves existing service providers in terms of OAM&P. If legacy telephone companies want to survive into the next decade, they must learn the lessons contained in this book.