netea smartway technology

Overview

netea smartway is a unique networking appliance that combines the following features in one box:

• Business class firewall for secure Internet connection
• VPN router for secure communication using Internet transport
• Business class Voice over IP telephone exchange/server
• Server for network infrastructure services like DHCP, NTP, DNS etc.

Different form factors (desktop chassis and 19" chassis) permit the used of netea smartway at home offices or small subsidiaries as well as in concentrated IT environments for enterprises or in computing centres.

The following illustration shows two netea smartway systems acting as servers and interconnection between the central enterprise and a subsidiary. The local PCs in the subsidiary are connected to the enterprise network with a secure VPN connection. Telephone calls of the subsidiary are also sent to the enterprise and can be terminated to the telephone system there. The subsidiary also uses a local ISDN connection for termination of local calls and for ISDN backup.

Firewall

Internet Router

Currently are different technologies to connect to the Internet. One of the most deployed access technologies in Europe is ADSL, which allows the transmission of medium data rates up to 8 Mbps on a two wire telephone line. In combination to that technology many access providers offer cheap volume or flat-rate tariffs.

netea smartway allows to interconnect to ADSL with external modems. The interconnection protocol (PPP over Ethernet, PPPoE) is implemented in netea smartway, configuration of access parameters is also done with the netea smartway web management system.

When volume or time tariffs are used, netea smartway can control the traffic volume or the login time.

If the ADSL connection fails, netea smartway can dial an ISDN connection for backup.

Network services for the local network

netea smartway supports the following local network services:

• DHCP for automated IP address management
• DNS for name services
• Ethernet VLAN to separate a physical network into different logical sub-networks
• NTP for time synchronisation services

VPN functionality

Application

The abbreviation VPN means "virtual private network". A VPN can interconnect two local networks using Internet transport while securing the interconnection with encryption to prevent fraud or wire tapping.

Technical data

netea smartway implements IPSEC with pre-shared keys or with the possibility to use a public key infrastructure (PKI). With IPSEC it is easy to interconnect subsidiaries with the enterprise network in a secure way. For the connection of single computers with the enterprise network an IPSEC client installation on the PC or the Microsoft Windows proprietary remote access protocol PPTP may be used. User management can be done with netea smartway's integrated user management or centralised by using directory services like LDAP, Active Directory, or RADIUS.

Voice-over-IP telephony server

Application

netea smartway implements a VoIP telephony system with the SIP standard. Current SIP phones can be used as system phones. netea smartway interconnects to other SIP VoIP exchanges or server systems with IP, to different SIP service providers, and to ISDN for call termination. The flexible and configurable routing allows the concurrent use of these interconnection mechanisms.

Telephony features

netea smartway supports the following features for telephony:

• Internal calls without any use of external resources,
• Call distribution
• Calling groups
• Voice mail

Additional functions are available with respect to the SIP phone, like 3-party conferences, call forwarding, etc.

flexible call routing

Call routing rules can be defined with prefix rules. By using customisations with netea smartway script even complex routing mechanisms are easy to implement.

Voice mail system

The voice mail system implements a network answering machine. It can be managed with a web interface. New messages can trigger a message or a notification light on the associated phone if applicable. The voice mail server has a capacity of 30 GByte and can store more than 1,000 hours of messages.

SIP gateway

Using the SIP gateway feature netea smartway interconnects to SIP service providers. SIP services providers offer telephone numbers for rent and forward calls to that numbers to SIP phones or servers using the Internet. Generally this service is combined with a low-rate call termination to the telephone network. Using the SIP gateway netea smartway users can reach other users of this service and receive or transmit calls to the telephone network. Further this gateway allows interconnection to other smartway systems or to other SIP platforms.

SIP Gateway features:

• Call receiving/forwarding to SIP service providers
  • Unlimited number of lines
  • User specific configuration
• Call media handling (RTP)
  • Proxy (Avoiding problems with NAT and firewalls)
  • Transcoding, Bandwidth management
  • Multiplexing of calls on inter-smartway connections for efficient connections

ISDN gateway

The ISDN gateway allows the termination and receiving of calls from the telephony network with netea smartway eliminating the need for using a SIP service provider. An ISDN connection can also be desirable when using a SIP provider, e.g. for termination to special service numbers, for emergency calls or for using ISDN dialup connections as fallback in case of ADSL failures.

The ISDN connection can be equipped with 1 to 4 basic rate interfaces (BRI).