Broadcom Gives VOIP Chip a Speed Boost

Broadcom Corp. has upgraded its integrated voice-over-IP chip to Gigabit Ethernet speeds, company officials said Monday.

The BCM1103 component is designed to sit within a VOIP phone, routing and encrypting calls as well as data to and from the PC. Broadcoms previous chip used a 10/100 Fast Ethernet connection, a slower speed that is slowly being phased out of enterprises.

Currently, the BCM1103 uses a Gigabit Ethernet MAC (media access control) interface and two slower 10/100M-bps physical external connections. The Gigabit-to-Fast Ethernet connection was made for cost reasons, according to Bill Boora, the IP phone product marketing manager for Broadcom, of Irvine, Calif. Once the price of Gigabit Ethernet PHY components decreases, they will be integrated, he said.

The chip is Broadcoms first to ship with its internally designed BroadSafe security suite, which provides hardware encryption for the call. The phone can also be used with a software VPN for increased security, Boora said. The software suite is also intelligent enough to block a flood of packets that could be indicative of a third-party attack on the system, he said.

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Broadcom has designed a reference platform around the new chip to assist with third-party product design. The reference design includes the Broadcom PhonexChange IP telephony suite, which comes standard on all of Broadcoms IP telephony products.

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