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V. Rishi Kumar

If noise in a telephone line is your idea of frustration, here's what someone is doing to free it up for some smooth riding.

YOU are dialling long distance to talk to a loved one. The call is through but not the voice. You talk amidst distorted sounds, echoes of hellos, wishing all the time for more sound clarity.

Much the same is often seen in Internet telephony too - when you try talking to a loved one in the US or elsewhere through your Internet connection here.

Wishing something could be done about making communication, be it local or long distance, happen with bell-like clarity?

It's already happening, says Java Giridhar, Country Manager of Juniper Networks India. He cites the Infranet initiative, being spearheaded by his company, as the answer to poor linkages between service providers, poor voice clarity, and the high costs of talking.

What exactly does the Infranet promise home users and businesses?

Put simply, the Infranet is an interconnected network. Based on industry standards, it promises adequate quality of service along with security and bandwidth.

According to Juniper, the Infranet combines the power of the Internet with private network infrastructures. The common standard features two interfaces: one connecting users and the network, and the other connecting carriers. The first alerts the network on the application used while the second ensures quality of service while enabling service providers to work out tariffs.

Talking to eWorld, Java Giridhar, says , the Infranet brings together the advantages of private networking with the global reach and ubiquity of the public Internet. The Infranet is designed to benefit and facilitate new and emerging services such as grid computing and is flexible enough to manage unforeseen problems in network management.

Juniper Networks is working with a host of vendors and service providers across the world to piece together new technologies that would ensure consistent quality across networks, he says. It is all about the future of networking aimed at ensuring the same quality when a call passes through multiple service providers, says Giridhar.

"Internet access continues to expand rapidly. But unfortunately, the quality of the experience for most users has not improved and this varies from place to place and from one service provider to another. Despite ever increasing investments from service providers worldwide to address this problem, it has become obvious that the basic nature of the Internet does not enable the services that people are willing to pay a premium for, nor does it provide a secure environment that business can trust."

And this is where the Infranet can help. Instead of creating a virtual private network (VPN) for each customer or each service type, the Infranet creates partitions to divide traffic according to quality of service and security requirements. "Multiple services and customers may share the same partition if their requirements are the same and ensure that only traffic authorised for a given service is admitted to the partition where that service is supported. This approach is considerably more scalable than the old VPN-per-customer model," he says.

The Infranet focuses on creating open standards for carriers to exchange data, quality of service requirements and payment information. It also leads the development of open standards for different users, be it business, residential or wireless, to interact with the network. With the Infranet initiative, a service provider will ensure the same quality of service on the IP (Internet Protocol) side, says Giridhar.

"It is necessary to understand that this cannot be achieved by one organisation, say Juniper Networks or BSNL or for that matter Deutsche Telecom, since it concerns all operators. The Infranet Council formed by technology vendors, original equipment manufacturers, service providers and leading groups such as IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, Siemens, British Telecom and Orange are all part of this to ensure we improve the standards and ensure the same quality across networks," he says.

"If you look at the dial-up experience, often a user is faced with frustrating issue of delays, particularly when he roams across networks. By deploying the right gateway, it is possible to ensure that this issue is handled without disruption. When the industry takes to this, we will all be able to enjoy an enhanced experience," he says.

Picture by R. Ragu

mail to:vrishi@thehindu.co.in

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