BURLINGTON, Mass. -- Acme Packet® today announced support for policy servers from Alcatel, Camiant, and Operax by its Net-Net® family of session border controllers. The solutions from Acme Packet and these partners address the need for QoS- and bandwidth-on-demand for real-time interactive IP-based voice, video and multimedia sessions. Each of these partners' products satisfies a unique set of requirements in next-generation DSL, cable, wireline and wireless networks.

In these solutions, the Acme Packet Net-Net session border controller performs session admission control in conjunction with policy servers - session acceptance or graceful rejection using SIP signaling messages - based upon its requests to the policy server for bandwidth and QoS on a per call basis. These requests use standards-based COPS and SOAP/XML messages. The policy server authorizes the sessions, reserves bandwidth and QoS, and provisions the transport equipment, such as IP edge routers, DSL BRAS, and cable CMTS systems for enforcement.

Acme Packet's policy server support complements its existing SLA assurance features including session admission control based upon bandwidth constraints, session agent constraints and observed QoS; signaling-controlled QoS packet marking and mapping; QoS reporting and routing by codec type.

"This new functionality provided by Acme Packet and our partners offers service providers a centralized bandwidth management approach with policy enforcement by the transport equipment," commented Seamus Hourihan, Vice President Marketing and Product Management at Acme Packet. "Combined with our session border controller's existing capabilities, we enable providers to deliver high-quality, primary line voice residential services and satisfy the stringent SLA requirements of business customers for not only voice, but business-critical, real-time interactive video and multimedia sessions."

Acme Packet