[Scan-DC] Off the shelf - P25

[LtBrown122 at aol.com]

The _National Law Enforcement  and Corrections Technology Center 
Communications Technologies Center of  Excellence_ (http://www.nlectc.org/)  (COE) in 
Camden, N.J., has organized an APCO P25 radio network  pilot in conjunction with 
the Cape May County, N.J., prosecutors’ office. The  P25 communications network 
pilot tests off-the-shelf and open-standards  technologies to evaluate and 
demonstrate network-migration strategies, said Rick  Mulvihill, the director of 
the COE.  
The COE was approached by the Cape May County prosecutor about a potential  
pilot program in their district in order to evaluate P25 networks. The center  
developed a public-private partnership with the county and leading market  
vendors, because “P25 is the de facto technology that homeland security  and the 
DOJ want state and local governments to deploy,” Mulvihill said. The  result 
is a multi-vendor, multi-site, trunked network that is enabled by an  IP-based 
architecture. 
The center used Cisco’s integrated-services router, which runs Etherstack’s  
LMR network controller software. It then added repeaters from Kenwood and 
Tait  and prototype repeaters from a third manufacturer, said Ed Vea, the COE’s  
program manager. Kenwood’s TKR-8400P, Tait’s TB8100 and the prototype 
repeaters  are networked together by Etherstack’s all-IP core network soft-switch, he 
said.  The softswitch runs on the router, thereby offering a site-switch 
interface that  serves as the ISSI and CSSI gateway. All components are connected 
over the  county’s IP network, Vea said. 
Vea added that putting vendors’ equipment through real-world scenarios can  
demonstrate the functionality of a P25 communications network while at the same 
 time supporting a nascent marketplace. 
“The COE wants more competition, so that the P25 market benefits from  
economies of scale,” he said. “So we’d like to see interchangeable multi-vendor  
environments on both the infrastructure and on the mobile/portable side.” 
The pilot eventually will include operations on all public-safety bands to  
demonstrate higher levels of interoperability, including cross-band operation  
and backward compatibility with analog subscriber units. It also will leverage 
 IP, support both ISSI and CSSI gateways and continue to test vendors’ P25  
systems on the mobile as well as infrastructure side, Mulvihill  noted.
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