Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey-based Ascom Timeplex Inc has extended its Synchrony family of products with the ST-20, a mid-range speech and data backbone node. The hybrid Frame Relay and circuit switch is capable of simultaneously supporting combined speech, data and video traffic over a single network via the company’s Express Switching technology, announced last March, which enables users dynamically to merge delay sensitive traffic with SNA and local area network traffic. The node also features the company’s Express Routing capability, which is said to enable network managers to prioritise individual data streams and uses identical modules as the ST-1000 and ST-50 Synchrony offerings, accepting up to 12 modules. The ST-20’s Application Server Module – ASM-16 – supports compressed voice, Group III facsimile and modem data, enabling multiple traffic types to be transported over one network trunk, adds the Swiss firm. Ascom said the product can also be connected to Private Automatic Branch Exchanges, with signalling information from digital exchanges being interpreted to allocate bandwidth only when two users wish to communicate over the net. It asserts that this traffic can be compressed to 8Kbps and combined with sub-rate data channels as small as 2.4Kbps. Bandwidth available to speech traffic can also be dynamically shared with frame-based data for cost efficiency, said Ascom, which adds that the product’s intelligent facsimile handling enables it to accept fax traffic within voice circuits. In conjunction with the ST-20, Ascom has also introduced the AD-10 Access Device, a standa-alone branch product with up to eight analogue speech ports and 16 data ports, which can be connected to the ST-20 and other Synchrony members via a 56Kbps or 64Kbps trunk. The ST-20 and AD-10 are out now; no prices were given.
