Mitel Leads Development of Open Standard to Simplify VoIP Deployments

<p>Sydney, 15th Dec 2005 - Mitel, a leading provider of IP communications solutions, today announced it has released a standards-ready implementation of the Telecommunications Industry Association’s (TIA) Link Layer Discovery Protocol for Media Endpoint Discovery (LLDP-MED) as part of Mitel 3300 IP Communications Platform’s latest release.</p>
<p>LLDP-MED was formally ratified through the TIA standards process in November, and is expected to be published as ANSI/TIA-1057 shortly. Mitel, as Editor of the specification, led the LLDP-MED standard definition and adoption effort in collaboration with other industry vendors.</p>
<p>The protocol greatly simplifies the deployment and ongoing management of VoIP endpoints, as well as providing a fully standardized way to locate such endpoints as part of enhancing Emergency Call Service capabilities in enterprise VoIP networks.</p>
<p>Gwilym Funnell, Mitel Australia Country Manager commented, “This is a major technology standard that will benefit every business using IP telephony. LLDP-MED standardises VoIP device discovery and management on the network. This new standard will allow enormously simplified management and multi-vendor plug and play for IP telephony solutions.”</p>
<p>Based on IEEE 802.1AB "Link Layer Discovery Protocol", LLDP-MED extends the standard to specifically focus on the needs of VoIP to allow simplified provisioning, ease of administration and several valuable new discovery capabilities.</p>
<p>The new LLDP-MED standard enables the following key features:
• Auto-discovery of Quality of Service LAN policies (such as VLAN, Layer 2 Priority and Diffserv settings), leading to "plug and play" VoIP networking.
• Device location discovery, critical to reporting location of the end user in emergency calling and other location dependant applications, as well as maintaining integrity of the location database.
• Extended and automated power management of Power over Ethernet endpoints, including fine-grained power budgeting and priority settings.
• Inventory management, allowing network administrators to track their VoIP devices, and determine their characteristics (manufacturer, software and hardware versions, serial / asset number).
• "Fast start" mechanisms, considered important for VoIP devices to come fully into service in a timely fashion.</p>
<p>Mitel aligns with other industry leaders to provide powerful, flexible and robust solutions to meet the needs of any environment and any customer. With IP communications products designed to work on virtually any LAN/WAN infrastructure, Mitel customers have the choice and flexibility to easily customize solutions to their individual business needs.</p>
<p>About Mitel
Mitel is a market leader for voice, video, and data convergence over broadband networks. With a focus on the user experience, the company delivers advanced communications solutions that are easily customized for individual business needs. Mitel solutions extend from intuitive desktop appliances and applications through to Applications and Services Gateways that enable business process integration and enhancement. Customers are provided with innovative ways to leverage their resources and migrate to the benefits of IP communications at their own pace. Mitel is headquartered in Ottawa, Canada, with offices, partners, and resellers worldwide. For more information please visit www.mitel.com.</p>
<p>Media contact
Sebastian Rice
Silverspan
02 9959 1991
seb@silverspan.com
www.silverspan.com</p>

• Got more on this story? Email Computerworld
• Follow Computerworld on twitter