When used in conjunction with wireless equipment, soft switches, media gateways and application servers, the blade bridges call-control functionality and service-processing capabilities of traditional circuit-switched telephone network switches and emerging Internet Protocol (IP) networks.

The operating-system-agnostic blade is capable of functioning independently while communicating with other subsystems over the embedded Ethernet/IP backplane network of a PICMG 2.16 system. It enables system developers to integrate SS7/IP functionality directly into next-generation embedded architecture.

The IPnexus Signaling Gateway Blade has an OEM price of $19,500 for eight SS7 links. It will be available in the third quarter of this year.