Public Relations

Asgent Releases Next Generation Practical IP Telephony Appliance Mid-range Model "Applico SIP RTC Switch ASA880"

Dec 1, 2003
Asgent,Inc.
(OTC No. 4288)

Asgent, Inc. (President & CEO: Takahiro (Shuji) Sugimoto, Located in Nihonbashi, Chuo-ku, Tokyo), a pioneer in security solutions, announces the release in January 2004 of a mid-range next generation practical IP telephony appliance, the "Applico SIP RTC Switch ASA880", developed jointly with Applico Security, Inc. (President: Arun Kant, Located in U.S.A.).

Interest in VoIP is on the rise. In a survey conducted by IDC Japan, 25% of companies have already adopted it and another 63% are planning on adopting it in the next year or are considering using it. Also the Japanese domestic VoIP service market is expected to grow from an estimated 3.1 billion yen in 2002 to 720 billion yen in 2007, with the number of companies adopting VoIP expected to continue growing.

Meanwhile, there are still a large number of companies that are unsure about the relationship between quality and existing infrastructure. In particular, there are concerns that if VoIP cannot be successfully fused with existing infrastructure then that will lead to increased initial investment. Therefore a solution is required which allows transition with minimum initial investment and fusion with existing infrastructure.

With this situation in mind, Asgent began sales of the next generation IP telephony appliance "Applico SIP RTC Switch ASA3800" in August of this year. The "ASA3800" not only makes use of existing capital expenditure, it also solves the problem of voice quality and security, two matters of concern when using VoIP over the Internet. It is also the world's first next generation IP telephony appliance to support Real-time Communications (RTC) such as presence, applications and video using multi-streaming technology as well as VoIP. Following the release of the "ASA3800", we received many inquiries and have received a lot of attention both domestically and internationally, with Sun Chlorella, Inc. (a Japanese company based in Kyoto) introducing it.

The "ASA880" which is to be released in January has been designed as a mid-range model with medium sized companies in mind, emphasizing concurrent sessions, redundancy features and expandability, rather than the "ASA3800" which is a high-end model aimed at carriers and ISPs. As with the "ASA3800", the "ASA880" enables complete control of the SIP default port 5060 and n:n NAT traversal which was not supported by previous firewall devices. It also supports VPN, PPTP and TLS, allowing secure communications.

The "Applico SIP RTC Switch" supports Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2003 and it is possible to use practical application functions such as whiteboard and instant messaging over the Internet with it as well.

The recommend sales price for the "Applico SIP RTC Switch ASA880" is 2.8 million yen, with a maximum of 5000 user registrations and a capacity for a maximum of 1000 concurrent sessions. While there are a large number of products available with QoS features included, if you compare the "ASA880" with competitors' products which have SIP connection and firewall functions, you will see that the Applico switch has twice the concurrent session capacity while keeping the price to a less than a third of others.

Applico SIP RTC Switch ASA880

Features - The Optimum Solution for Transition to Next Generation Communications -

• High Quality Voice and Video
  • Support for multiple codecs （G711, G723, G723.1 and G729）
  • Voice, Video, Instant Messaging, Application Sharing (Multi-stream technology) with RTC.
  • Compatibility with Microsoft Windows Messenger
  • Adoption of QoS Technology


• Ensures Secure Communications
  • Dynamic Control of Port 5060
  • Encryption Features （TLS、PPTP、VPN）


• Lower Initial Investment Through Connectivity with Existing Products（RFC-compliant）
  • Interconnectivity between IP-PBX, PSTN Gateway, SIP Server, SIP Client and other Components
  • Supports all RFC-compliant SIP Clients
  • nterconnectivity via TINY SIP with H.323、MGCP、MeGaCo/H.248


• Other
  • NAT Traversal
  • Supports IPv6

Specifications and Differences with other Series