Aculab, a leading provider of enabling technology for the communications market

Aculab's host media processing (HMP) software package enables developers and solutions providers to readily integrate multimedia processing with their IP-based application or service delivery platforms. Solutions benefiting from HMP can range from contact centres and IP-PBXs to media servers and conferencing products. Aculab's host-based media processing software is part of the Prosody family offering a broad set of IP-based media processing functions and call or session control protocols for VoIP and video communications. Prosody S HMP offers a comprehensive mix of the essential functions needed for a wide variety of IP-based applications such as IVR, T.38 fax and conferencing, together with Aculab's SIP and H.323 stacks and APIs.

Aculab's Prosody S HMP gives solutions providers a viable (SoftDSP) alternative to using DSP boards. It brings granular scalability and cost-efficiencies to those familiar with traditional, enabling technology board-based designs and offers the prospect of adding complementary voice features to online platforms, such as gaming and social networks.

Deployment flexibility

Aculab's HMP performs IP-based media processing tasks on any host CPU that is capable of running an operating system (Windows or Linux) in any platform or form factor - be it AMCs in an ATCA or µTCA chassis; an SBC in a 1U server; a processor blade in a telecoms server; or in an embedded system, general purpose PC or laptop.

Prosody S HMP can be deployed on practically any host, solution providers can choose the server platform that best suits their application, deployment environment, target market and price points. Whether you are an application developer or solutions provider, an equipment manufacturer or platform developer, a systems integrator or business communications service provider, you will gain significant CAPEX/OPEX benefits from investing in Aculab's Soft-DSP IP software alternative. 

Virtual Machine Support

Prosody S is also well suited to deployment in Virtual Machine (VM) environments. Tests have been carried out with a range of the most popular hypervisors:

• Citrix XenServer 5.5.0
• VMWare ESXi 4.0.0
• Microsoft HyperV 2008 R2
• Xen 4.0.0

Performance of Prosody S in the tested VMs varied, but in all cases the results were good, with high channel counts achievable under all hypervisors tested.

If you are interested in deployments in a virtualised environment, we are able to offer assistance with deployment guidelines via our support team. It should be noted, however, that Aculab does not state formal support for any particular VM or another as we do for Windows, Linux and Solaris - rather we give guidelines as to the operation of Prosody S in various virtual environments. 

Licensing and support

To ensure maximum deployment flexibility and cost-effectiveness, HMP is licensed very simply on a per channel basis, inclusive of all media processing functionality and signalling protocols with the exception of video functionality which is licensed separately. With a range of technical support options and competitive licensing prices - truly outstanding value for money is guaranteed. Details of the licensing process are described in the licensing process flowchart.

For new users we have created a quick start guide that explains all the steps needed to download, configure and activate the Prosody S software.

For more details on the Prosody S HMP functionality available from Aculab, see the product datasheet.

If you wish to discuss your product requirements or a purchase, please talk to your Account Manager or email sales@aculab.com

Target applications

Aculab's Prosody S HMP product enables market aware developers, systems integrators and equipment manufacturers to readily create high-performance, IP-based solutions. For an indication of what businesses, just like yours, are able to achieve, take a look at our solutions pages.

The following are examples of the kind of applications or service delivery platforms that can be built:

• Media servers
• Conferencing
• Command and control solutions
• Inbound/outbound IVR
• Interactive voice and video (IVVR) systems 
• Contact centres
• Soft phones
• Online gaming platforms
• Announcement servers
• Transcoding

Product benefits

• Prosody S host media processing software can be deployed on any platform or form factor - users can choose the server that best suits their application, deployment environment, target market and price points
• Virtualised environments are supported
• With HMP, greater cost-efficiencies can be gained through the utilisation of commodity rather than specialist components
• The low entry cost of an HMP software only product opens up new markets and increases margins in a competitive environment
• The granular channel count and high density capability of HMP means applications can be expanded or scaled to suit any end-user channel count requirement
• Aculab's HMP has a wide range of codecs including HD Voice types, which enables connection to diverse endpoint device types
• HMP can co-exist with Aculab's media processing boards, which allows an application to separately handle calls in both TDM and IP environments
• As HMP is a software only product, no costly hardware stock or spares holding is needed
• With Aculab's HMP, developers have a choice of mainstream CPU devices like AMD and Intel as Prosody S is not dependant on proprietary processor features
• Software only IP telephony using host media processing means a lower cost of ownership and greater deployment flexibility

If you wish to discuss your product requirements or a purchase, please talk to your Account Manager or email sales@aculab.com

To view the IP protocols available to use with Prosody S, including SIP and H.323, see protocols and approvals.

You can download Aculab's HMP software, for evaluation at any time, via the download utility that is available from software downloads. You can also download all of the relevant APIs and user guides, to read at your convenience, from technical documents.

Versatile technology

Aculab's HMP software, Prosody S, is part of a family of media processing platforms. When installed on a system, HMP looks to the application like an Aculab IP media processing board with TiNG architecture, however, all media processing takes place on the host processor.

Although very different types of enabling technology, both board and host-based media processing variants of the Prosody family share some essential qualities - SIP or H.323 stack, APIs, media processing, distributed architecture and call/session control functionality, as well as the same development team.

Consequently, an application suitably developed using Aculab's API can be easily ported to any of the products in the Prosody portfolio. This also makes HMP ideal for early solution development - licensing a small number of HMP channels can be an extremely cost-effective way of rapidly developing a trial or demo application. Full scale applications can be later deployed on HMP or ported to a board-based platform - it's a deployment choice - versatility in the extreme.

Functions and performance

Aculab's HMP software provides IP media processing functions for building flexible, scalable, and cost-effective next generation media servers, VoIP and IP telephony applications, voice portals or inbound/outbound IVR platforms. Prosody S host media processing offers ultimate granularity in terms of licensable channel count. This flexibility means it can scale from single figure channel counts, in providing IVR functionality for an SME/SMB scale IP-PBX, all the way up to hundreds of media server channels for fourth generation telco or service provider deployments.

Advantageously, HMP offers a complete portfolio of session control signalling and media processing functions for IP-based networks. Protocol support includes industry standard SIP and H.323 stacks, with support for Secure RTP and Secure SIP (SIPS), plus an MRCP V2 client for speech integration. Enhanced SIP stack functionality also includes call transfer and third party call control.

Essential media processing features include:

• Play and record
• RFC 2833 tones
• Full feature, N-way matrix audio conferencing
• RTP/RTCP media streaming with an enhanced range of narrow and wideband vocoders/CODECS, including iLBC, AMR-WB (G.722.2), ITU-T G.722.1, licensed from Polycom®, G.722, and TETRA
• Transcoding
• T.38 fax up to V.34 speeds
• Live speaker detection
• Call progress analysis
• Voice activity detection (VAD)
• Silence detection;
• Comfort noise (CNG);
• Packet loss concealment, and many other advanced functions

Prosody S supports video streams encoded in both H.263 and H.264 formats. Audio-video (AV) replay and record to SIP-based IP/RTP phones is supported in 3GPP (.3gp) and QuickTime (.mov) file formats.

Prosody S HMP supports dual-core and quad core architectures with densities largely dependent upon CPU performance and memory resources. Typical figures for record and play with DTMF detection, tested on an Intel Core 2 Extreme (X6800) CPU running at 2.93GHz are 580/750 full duplex G.711 channels for a Windows XP/SUSE Linux system respectively.

In a VM environment, channel counts of more than 400 channels (G.711) were achieved in Aculab performance verification tests for a virtual machine with a single core and 1GB of RAM allocated.

Additionally, if you wish to discuss your product requirements or a purchase, please talk to your Account Manager or email sales@aculab.com

To view the IP protocols available to use with Prosody S, including SIP and H.323, see protocols and approvals.

You can download Aculab's HMP software, for evaluation at any time, via the downloads utility that is available from software downloads. You can also download all of the relevant APIs and user guides, to read at your convenience, from technical documents.