The Lucent Technologies Softswitch - Realizing the promise of convergence

The Lucent Technologies Softswitch was created as a result of Project Saras, which was initiated by two Bell Labs researchers. The purpose of Project Saras was to develop a software system that solves several major problems that providers of telephony services now face. Today's public switched communications infrastructure consists of a variety of different networks, technologies and systems, most of which are still based on the wireline circuit-switched structure. The technology, however, is evolving to packet-based networks, and service providers need the ability to interconnect their customers with these flexible and cost-effective networks without losing the reliability convenience, and functionality of the public switched telephone network. The Lucent Softswitch, formerly known as the PacketStar(TM) IP Services Platform, resulted from a focus on these needs. This Softswitch was initially marketed as a signaling-interoperability and services-creation platform under the umbrella brand name PacketStar for Lucent data networking products. It was renamed in light of the recognition that it represented an emerging concept in the industry called a "softswitch," referring to a software-based distributed switching-and-control platform. This paper provides a high-level description of the Lucent Softswitch and its application to building next-generation converged networks.