XDS Series of Boards
The XDS series of boards was designed to bring the switching capabilities of much larger switches to the PC platform. XDS, which stands for eXternally Defined Switching, is the third generation of switching products from AMTELCO. The first generation was a voice grade line concentrator introduced in 1977. The second generation, the AMTELCO Switching Peripheral, or ASP, was introduced in 1985. The ASP was a general purpose, digital telephony switch designed to be controlled by a host computer. The XDS series of boards, the third generation, draws upon this experience to bring the same level of switching capability into PC environments. XDS boards have found wide usage with Computer Telephony developers.
XDS Design and Concept
From its beginning, AMTELCO has focused on the interface to the public telephone network, the ultimate connection of any telephony system. Drawing on years of experience in dealing with a wide variety of equipment and telephone networks, the XDS boards are designed to allow the user to take fullest advantage of the various interfaces, while insulating them from the details of network operation with field proven firmware. These interfaces are designed to be robust in nature with ample protection and full FCC certification, where applicable.
The XDS products are committed to the concept of open architecture. Interfaces exist to connect the XDS boards to various TDM and packet-switched environments, allowing the XDS boards to function alongside telephony boards from multiple vendors. XDS telephony boards continue to enjoy wide use in systems designed around the time-tested H.100 switching architecture, as developed by the Enterprise Computer Telephony Forum (ECTF®). The backwards compatibility of the H.100 bus architecture, coupled with the flexible hardware compatibility of the XDS boards, had first allowed for implementation of these XDS boards into legacy MVIP™ and SCSA® environments. As new TDM bus structures and soft switching architectures have emerged, AMTELCO has continued to be among the first to provide support for them. The latest line of AMTELCO XDS line interface boards now support Host Media Processing (HMP), allowing the packetizing and switching of audio streams through the digital backplane for more current IP-based environments such as Asterisk®. Telephony interface boards in the current XDS product lines are available in multiple form factors to support both PCI and PCI Express (PCIe) platforms, while all software drivers are distributed with full source code included.
AMTELCO XDS now maintains its forward growth into partnerships with system developers and telephony equipment manufacturers that utilize an increasing array of communication technologies. XDS Radio Interface boards are finding frequent use within modern Asterisk PBX and call dispatch systems, while ISDN line interfaces (both to the public network and to local terminal devices) continue to be an affordable and cost-effective medium. Custom board design has long been an additional offering of the XDS design team, benefiting from an experienced staff of on-site hardware engineers, firmware engineers, CAD engineers, and Production technicians.
AMTELCO XDS looks forward to maintaining a long tradition of designing and manufacturing the high quality, cost effective, reliable telephony interface products that our customers depend upon, while remaining on the leading edge of today’s changing communication technologies.