What is needed to support VoIP with Blueworx Voice Response

To assemble a Blueworx Voice Response system that supports VoIP, you will need one of the three following configurations:
BladeCenter using DTNA
  • An Blueworx BladeCenter computer with AIX PowerPC® blades (JS20, JS21, JS22, PS700, PS701, or PS702).
  • AIX 6.1 or 7.1 installed.
  • Blueworx Voice Response software, Version Version 7.
System p using DTNA
  • An Blueworx System p with Power 5, Power 6, or Power 7 processors.
  • AIX 6.1 or 7.1 installed on the system unit.
  • Blueworx Voice Response software, Version Version 7.

To send and receive voice data over an IP network your Blueworx Voice Response system requires at least one DTNA adapter. The DTNA is installed using a single AIX command and then configured using Blueworx Voice Response Pack and/or System configuration.

Capacity planning for VoIP systems using DTNA involves considerations about the use of DTMF detection and voice compression:

DTMF detection
With DTNA, the system unit's processors are used for DTMF detection. This cost can be avoided if the VoIP network supplies DTMF send/receive keys using RTP payload packets - RFC2833 (Telephone Event).
Compression
As previously described, DTNA only supports uncompressed voice over a Voice over IP link. However, the use of compressed voice within the voice application (the 5:1 ‘GSM’ algorithm) can have a big effect on the processor requirements for DTNA.
For compressed voice (playing and/or recording)
The DTNA adapter software needs to do a decompression on play and a compression on record. This can take a significant processing effort.

iLBC compression is significantly more complex than G.711 and so, understandably, requires greater processing power. A system that can currently support 480 channels of G.711 can typically support up to 120 iLBC channels. Systems with a higher/lower rPerf will support more/less concurrent channels, respectively, up to the maximum 480 per system/partition. See http://www.ibm.com/systems/power/hardware/notices/rperf.html for further information on rPerf.

For uncompressed voice (playing and/or recording)
No decompression and subsequent compression is required, so the CPU load for DTNA processing is reduced.

DTNA adapters provide the following functionality:

DTNAs (software adapters for VoIP) can be installed in the same system as DTTAs. However, calls cannot be tromboned between DTTAs and DTNAs, although they can be tromboned within each group of similar adapters, as follows: DTNA to DTNA, DTTA to DTTA, but not DTNA to DTTA or DTTA to DTNA.

Some example combinations of adapters are:

The DTNA can be mixed with DTTAs, with a maximum of four instances of either type.

Adapterless configurations have the following double-trunking capabilities: