NEW YORK -- Wireless security software developer Columbitech today announced wireless VPN support for securing wireless voice applications (wVoIP). This new release contains security framework enhancements that provide protection for making reliable and robust VoIP calls. Users who have wVoIP capabilities are able to securely check e-mail and voicemail, and have access to corporate files. Columbitech takes a holistic approach to secure the converged IP networks with no limitations to bandwidth or applications.

The Columbitech WVPN provides built-in support for Session Persistence – that is, the ability to maintain a session while being out of wireless coverage. The most important requirement when it comes to wVoIP is to maintain the session, so that the call will not be cut off. For users, this means that once initiated, a call will not be cut off because of a disruption of network coverage, like poor WLAN signal strength. The Columbitech WVPN makes it possible to resume and continue a call that was initiated at a WLAN hotspot over a public 3G network or over any packet switched IP network. The Columbitech WVPN is a session-based VPN.

The solution also provides TCP connection multiplexing to prevent flooding the wireless link with redundant TCP retransmissions during handover. In short, the available bandwidth will be used to transport actual traffic instead of redundant TCP retransmissions. If the entire link capacity is utilized for retransmissions, TCP will eventually break down due to lack of new user data on the link. However, if all data were multiplexed over one TCP Session, there would be plenty of room for new data to reach the receiver and the applications would be more likely to survive a bad connection.

“Data and voice convergence are very compelling from an application point of view, but very challenging from a security point of view,” said Åsa Holmstrom, President of Columbitech. “The same security threats that enterprises have been facing regarding data are now also a reality for voice. With the Columbitech Wireless VPN, enterprise users can protect both their voice and data applications and resources with a solution that is optimized for wireless networks.”

Columbitech AB