CommuniGate Systems has demonstrated the performance and scalability of its product architecture. CommuniGate Pro All-Active Dynamic Cluster, which holds the world SPECmail record for messaging, has demonstrated its capability in a simulation and benchmark for a 10 million VoIP subscriber environment. Working with Hewlett Packard, Intel, Navtel Communications and F5 Networks in an emulated real-world environment, CommuniGate Systems highlighted and documented the massive scalability of its unique SIP Farm technology on a 64-CPU Integrity Superdome system from HP.

As part of CommuniGate Systems' mission to eliminate proprietary service protocols and open up end-to-end IP Communications to the entire global online base of nearly two billion accounts, this benchmark was the first milestone in building large-scale, standards-based communities of VoIP subscribers. Traditional telecommunications, cable and wireless providers today often support 50 million-plus subscribers, and must begin planning now how to move these customers to VoIP. CommuniGate Systems seeks to convert all accounts into a single identity for all IP Communications, reachable globally via voice, video, IM and e-mail -- shattering traditional concepts of location and presence. With all-active nodes clustered into a single grid-like unit, CommuniGate's flagship CommuniGate Pro IP Communications platform is the most cost-effective solution, with the clear ability to scale while providing truly unified IP Communications -- all your content in the Inbox.

The benchmark simulation of a moderately-sized carrier base of 10 million subscribers was conducted to prove cost-effective scaling by just adding nodes, using either virtualization or physical additions of servers to the running cluster as needed. Carriers must achieve zero downtime, high QoS, rolling upgrades and changes on the fly, with regional capabilities for local-area calling, disaster recovery and business continuation plans, as all forms of IP Communications converge on a single platform.

The benchmark call load generation topped out at 1,000 SIP calls per second (3.6 million calls per hour, each 60s in duration) with up to 192,000 unique registered user-agent endpoints driven by a Navtel InterWatch R14 for inbound calling (to subscribed accounts). Simultaneously, the open-source SIP load generator "sipp" was used to generate additional outbound calls. Using a virtualized (partition-based) 6x2 cluster (Six Frontends - 5 Linux/1 HP-UX, and two HP-UX Backends) on a single Superdome system, the benchmark team discovered that the CommuniGate SIP Farm and F5 BIG-IP 6400 continued to perform within required QoS until no further load could be generated by the test environment available. Future benchmarks will utilize a fully-equipped Navtel chassis to increase the available SIP load capacity.

"Increasingly, service providers are including VoIP and other IP communications as part of their subscriber offerings. To do so requires a messaging and communications infrastructure that can handle the load demands of carrier-class IP communications," said Maurene Caplan Grey, founder and principal analyst of Grey Consulting. "Before purchasing such an infrastructure product, service providers should review benchmarking results to substantiate vendor claims of carrier-class scalability and reliability."

"CommuniGate Pro is a truly unified IP Communications application server platform which delivers reliability and scalability through a dynamic yet simple architecture. The product continues to win more awards, more records for scaling, and holds the highest customer satisfaction in the market. We will continue to look for innovative ways to deliver the single most comprehensive IP Communications suite that can be trusted to scale up or down for all user deployments around the world whether it be an enterprise or carrier," said Jon R. Doyle, vice president of business development at CommuniGate Systems.

"The results of this benchmark truly demonstrate the flexibility and scalability of HP Integrity Superdome systems running both Linux and HP-UX," said Don Jenkins, vice president of marketing for Business Critical Servers at HP. "The HP Integrity platform delivers the superior performance and high service levels required for fail-proof VoIP communications for CommuniGate customers."

"Intel is very excited about delivering joint solutions to our customers looking to deploy scalable VoIP systems. Intel and CommuniGate have worked together using Intel's software tools to optimize CommuniGate's solution on Itanium-based platforms. In addition, with the Itanium platform moving towards multi-core with the upcoming Montecito launch, there should be another leap in performance," said Michael Stanford, Intel's director of VoIP strategy.