Network heavyweights Cisco and Ascend are pushing the Voice Over IPovercomes past technological flaws. (VoIP) market forward with fresh products and revamped strategies.

Both companies believe the technology is over-coming its flaws of diminished QoS and reliability. Cisco's UK managing director, Paul Mountford, says retail banks, as well as service providers, are now trialling VoIP applications.

"This will be deployed as a middle ground with some form of safety net.

The service can be very reliable if the design and infrastructure provide an alternative path," he said.

Cisco is introducing the Cisco 2600 series modular access router, heralding the third phase of Cisco's data, voice and video integration strategy.

This phase focuses on gateways between different multiservice, mixed-technology environments including: gateways from network protocols to Private Branch Exchange (PBX) protocols to public voice and ISDN switching protocols; gateways from IP to ATM; gateways from low-speed access to broadband backbone switching; and gateways from circuit switching to packet and cell switching.

Cisco is also introducing a Java-based application to configure and manage voice-over-data networks. The Cisco Voice Manager measures QoS parameters such as delay, packet loss and type of service.

It also offers detailed reporting of Call Detail Records, Call Volume Reports and Active Call Reports.

"Network managers may need only to add a new card, not replace their infrastructure," said Joe Frost, Cisco's product marketing manager for enterprise systems. "Its part of delivering a gradual migration capability."

Previous phases of Cisco's integration strategy included upgrading Wan capability. Rival vendors believe this is vital to the success of the whole project.

"You can't deliver voice over IP without a QoS backbone," explained Mark Purdom, Ascend European corporate marketing manager.

Ascend is using its IP Navigator software, which uses features of the emerging Multiple Protocol Label Swapping standard, to provide end-to-end 'absolute QoS'. On the back of this, it is shipping the MultiVoice MAX VoIP as a "toll quality" product for large ISPs. Ascend has a roadmap to supply voice over Frame Relay and eventually for platform interoperability.

"We are taking layer 3 products and mapping them to layer 2. Routing on layer 2 switches is leaps and bounds ahead of a router. Routers don't scale," said Purdom.