ntl:Telewest Business Brings Class Of Service Controls To DSL

Published 16th July 2008

First UK telco to offer Class of Service (CoS) options across entire next generation connectivity portfolio...

Eight Classes of Service enable DSL customers to apply more sophisticated prioritisation to key data, voice and video traffic

DSL broadband services gain equal prioritisation options to higher capacity communications services

ntl:Telewest Business, part of the Virgin Media group, has announced that it has upgraded its converged solutions portfolio and is now able to provide organisations with eight Class of Service options (CoS), across it’s IPVPN product, which includes it’s Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) connections. This is a first for UK telecommunications providers.

The new CoS offering is available immediately on all dedicated ntl:Telewest Business DSL services, which range in speed from 12 Kilobits per second (Kbps) to 8 Megabits per second (Mbps). Higher capacity services also gained greater granularity of traffic prioritisation with an increase from four CoS to eight. The upgrade ensures that the same choice is now available on all DSL services, meaning smaller businesses and those that need to connect multiple branch offices can now benefit from traffic prioritisation throughout their network.

With Next Generation Networks (NGNs) now enabling more sophisticated converged data and voice technologies, the need for businesses to ensure that their network is delivering the speed and performance required is becoming increasingly more important. The availability of eight CoS means organisations can ring-fence their most critical or performance-sensitive network traffic, such as voice and video, from other less crucial data.

“For the first time, businesses can exert the same control over traffic on their DSL lines as the rest of the network,” said Stephen Beynon, MD of ntl:Telewest Business. “This makes the use of IP voice and other performance-sensitive applications a reality to all users of the network, not just those on the core. It will mean businesses really can capitalise on these applications for their home workers and smaller offices.”

“This level of sophisticated traffic prioritisation puts us head and shoulders above other UK telcos in our ability to offer next generation traffic controls. By responding to the fast-changing needs of our customers, we hope to provide them with the flexibility and agility they need to support the applications required for collaborative working in an increasingly mobile workforce, now and in the future,” said Mr Beynon.

The eight CoS are:

• Real Time 1: Voice media (real time). These are typically variable rate applications that require low jitter and packet loss, plus very low delay. Normally these are Voice over IP (VoIP) and sensitive video applications that do not have the ability to change encoding rates, or to mark packets with different importance indications.

• Real Time 2: Video media (real time). This is recommended for delay-sensitive and jitter-sensitive video applications such as IPCCTV.

• Customer Control: This is best suited for peer-to-peer and client-server signalling and control functions, using protocols such as SIP, SIP-T, H.323, H.248 and Media Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP).

• Application 1: Multimedia video streaming, which are not purely real-time in nature, or business-critical applications.

• Application 2, 3 and 4: Business-critical applications. These three classes are best suited for applications that require bandwidth and loss guarantees but have a reasonable level of tolerance for jitter and latency. The application classes are equivalent to each other in terms of priority; however each can be guaranteed bandwidth independently of one other.

• Standard: The Standard service class is for applications that have not been identified as requiring differentiated treatment and is often referred to as best effort.