WARP Xtra

Hi everyone.  This is my first of what hopefully turns out to be weekly blogs.  I have been working with the PIKA’s WARP appliance for over four months now.  And upon the appliance reaching General Availability just a few weeks ago I thought I would step back from the bits and bytes of coding and delve into a bigger view of the WARP appliance. 

My initial thought is – “what does the future hold for this technology?”  I can imagine so many interesting directions for PIKA’s appliance.  This is largely due to the appliance’s expansion slots allowing one of many different interface modules to be added.   Today, a trunk (FXO) module and station (FXS) module exist to provide analog telephony interfaces to the appliance. 

So as the engineers are working along to develop a BRI/ISDN2 module – a digital interface commonly used in Europe to interface with the telephone companies – what other modules could the appliance house?  Here are some examples that first come to mind.

On the telephony front, a module that would allow my WARP appliance to communicate directly with mobile (GSM) networks would be cool.  This technology is commonly known as GSM.  Welcome to the cellular world.

Or perhaps a high density digital interface like E1 or T1 to allow the appliance to sit in front of legacy PBX equipment, dial out to the PSTN network or provide digital logging? 

And then there are possibilities for adding network connectivity – all of which can be used to transport IP calls or pure data communications.  For example, an interesting possibility would be a DSL or cable interface to allow my existing home provider to plug their coaxial cable into the appliance to feed it IP.  Alternatively for ‘last mile’ connections Wifi capabilities could be added.

Finally there is the possibly of broadband wireless capabilities to operate with my Internet provider.  This is commonly done through something called WiMax. 

And of course those expansion modules do not have to house networking interfaces.  They could be used to add USB ports to the box or in fact it could be used to hold any number of possible processing chips.  Could it be that we see video processing on the PIKA WARP appliance in the future?  Exciting times – and the sky the limit in reality.

Does anyone have any ideas for interesting additions to the appliance?  I would love to hear them.

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