Accelerating the deployment of VoIP and VoATM

The economic advantages of packet voice are driving both the access and core voice networks away from circuit switching towards packet. The industry continues to debate whether the future of these packet networks will be based on pure ATM, pure Internet protocol (IP), IP over asynchronous transfer mode (ATM), IP over multiprotocol label switching (MPLS), or a combination thereof. There are advantages to both ATM and IP and reasons for choosing each. This paper explores the role of next-generation switches which, as they become widely adopted for both access and core networking, must be able to handle voice traffic over both IP and ATM networks for future extensibility as the debate continues and must have the features necessary to interwork with existing public switched telephone network (PSTN).