Patton the leader in network access, connectivity and VoIP solutions announces that SmartNode VoIP routers now support triple-play services via IGMP and IP-multicast in SmartWare release 3.20.

Multi-service operators can leverage the new SmartWare features to increase revenues and reduce churn by adding triple-play services to their offerings while preserving their capital investment in Patton customer-premise equipment (CPE). Carrier-providers can download the new SmartWare to their installed CPEs to deliver packet-based video-on-demand, IPTV and streaming triple-play content to a subscriber's set-top box such as Amino Communications' Aminet 110.



"Carriers who deployed Patton can deliver Video-over-IP today without a throw-away upgrade of their installed CPEs," said Scott Whittle, Director of Product Management. "Carriers who chose cheap Asian products or big brands like Cisco will end up replacing everything or paying for expensive software upgrades."

SmartWare with IP-multicast and IGMP fixes the typical network- congestion problems caused by unicast Video-over-IP. Rather than saturating the network with duplicated video packets, SmartNode transmits a single stream of video packets to all hosts that request it.

Adding IGMP to SmartWare transforms SmartNode VoIP solutions into a complete portfolio of triple-play CPE solutions for the multi-service market. Because SmartNode offers converged-network solutions for both POTS and ISDN telephony, IGMP multicast in SmartWare makes SmartNode the first and only line of triple-play CPEs for the world's ISDN carriers and networks.

"We're not just adding video capability to a VoIP box," said Burton A. Patton, Executive Vice President. "SmartNode offers all the WAN and Telephony interfaces in models which scale from 2 to 120 VoIP calls." By equipping SmartWare with multicast and IGMP, Patton presents converged- network operators around the world with an extensive array of triple-play CPEs to fit any customer and service application."

All SmartNode models now ship with IGMP. SmartNode customers can download the latest SmartWare version free of charge from http://upgrades.patton.com.